Stephen Hawking: Genius at Work by Roger Highfield (Dorling Kindersley, £17.75)

I once went swimming with Stephen Hawking. Well, actually, I was in an outdoor pool, looked up—and there, to my amazement, was Hawking in his wheelchair, with his young son preparing to jump in the shallow end. It was in California—coincidentally, the same place that Roger Highfield also met Hawking for the first time. Highfield, former science editor of the Telegraph and editor of New Scientist, is now science director of the Science Museum Group. It is in this latter capacity that he has written Stephen Hawking: Genius at Work.

The book was prompted by the donation of Hawking’s office to London’s Science Museum. Much of the book’s content is inspired by objects from that office, such as Hawking’s blackboard of scientific doodles and his Oxford cox blazer, worn when he was thrown into the River Cherwell.

Highfield writes with awe and affection for his subject and covers pretty much every aspect of Hawking’s life. Most notably, as a former physicist, he explains Hawking’s key contributions to physics and cosmology with rare clarity. His expression for the temperature of a black hole is one of only two formulae inscribed on flagstones on the floor of Westminster Abbey.

What Highfield communicates so effectively is Hawking’s extraordinary energy. That time I saw Hawking at the pool was during one of his regular trips to the California Institute of Technology to visit Kip Thorne, one of his many scientific collaborators. His travels took him everywhere, not only to visit scientists—but film directors such as Steven Spielberg, actors such as Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper) and presidents such as Barack Obama. This sumptuously illustrated celebration of Hawking’s life captures perfectly its depth and breadth. If you ever achieve a hundredth of what Hawking did in a typical day, you are doing well.