In the 1950s, the educational system in England was harshly divided by class and testing-based intelligence, with certain scores demanded to set a particular student on an academic path.
One crucial exam taken by young Stephen Hawking required him to finish in the top 20 to continue on his particular course.
Hawking took the test three times, finishing 24th, 23rd and, finally, 18th.
It’s hard to imagine what many people’s understanding of the universe would be if, on that last test, he had finished 21st.
The intriguing aspects of this memoir by Hawking, the physicist who simplified the universe for us in “A Brief History of Time,” which has sold over 10 million copies worldwide, are the flourishes of humor, the confessions of failure (or barely reached success), and the overall way it conveys the personality of the man who managed to become a larger-than-life figure while confined to a wheelchair, robbed of speech and movement by ALS for most of his adult life.
While Hawking exhibited an intellectual aura as a child, his early academic path was shaky at best.
“I was never more than about halfway up the class,” he writes. “My classwork with untidy, and my handwriting was the despair of my teachers. But my classmates gave me the nickname Einstein, so presumably they saw signs of something better.”
Hawking was so concerned about the potential for academic failure that he applied to join the civil service, seeking “a job at the Ministry of Works, or one as a House of Commons clerk.” But he screwed that up — or allowed destiny to intervene, depending on your perspective — when he forgot, and therefore missed, the entrance exam.
One funny passage has Hawking spelling out exactly what a bad student he was, but in a way that only someone with a certain amount of intelligence was likely to do.
“I once calculated that I did about a thousand hours’ work in the three years I was [at school], an average of an hour a day,” he writes. “I’m not proud of this lack of work, but at the same time I shared my attitude with most of my fellow students.”
When he started losing his balance during his last year at Oxford, one doctor told him to simply “lay off the beer.”
His exact diagnosis of ALS would not come for some time, but he learned that whatever disease he had, it was degenerative and incurable. As he dealt with the ramifications, he did what he could to keep perspective.
“While I was in the hospital, I had seen a boy I vaguely knew die of leukemia in the bed opposite me, and it had not been a pretty sight,” he writes. “Clearly there were people who were worse off than me — at least my condition didn’t make me feel sick. Whenever I feel inclined to be sorry for myself, I remember that boy.”
His encroaching illness also imbued him with a desire to ensure that he lived a productive life.
“Shortly after I came out of the hospital, I dreamed that I was going to be executed,” he writes. “I suddenly realized that there were a lot of worthwhile things I could do if I was reprieved. Another dream I had several times was that I would sacrifice my life to save others. After all, if I was going to die anyway, I might as well do some good.”
Despite his hardships, Hawking did manage to find love — he’s been married and divorced twice — although the path was never easy. He describes how his first marriage went downhill due to his wife, Jane Wilde, fearing for his future.
“Our third child, Tim, was born in 1979 . . . [and] Jane became more depressed. She was worried I was going to die soon,” he writes. “[She] wanted someone who would give her and the children support and marry her when I was gone. She found Jonathan Jones, a musician and organist at the local church, and gave him a room in our apartment. I would have objected, but I too was expecting an early death and felt I needed someone to support the children after I was gone.”
Frustrated by their closeness, Hawking moved out in 1990 and married one of his nurses, Elaine Mason, in 1995. (Wilde and Jones married soon after. Hawking and Mason divorced in 2007.)
Throughout the book, Hawking makes it clear that despite the greatest of challenges — including a complete inability to move or speak — it is still possible to enjoy a rich, fulfilling existence.
“I have had a full and satisfying life,” he writes. “I believe that disabled people should concentrate on things that their handicap doesn’t prevent them from doing, and not regret those they can’t.”