Kitty Ferguson - Stephen Hawking. His Life and Work

About the Author

Kitty Ferguson first became acquainted with Stephen Hawking and his family when she and her husband and children lived in Cambridge in the late 1980s. Around that time she retired from her career as a professional singer and conductor and began writing and lecturing about science and scientists for readers and audiences with little or no scientific background. Her seven books have appeared to critical acclaim all over the world, in twenty-seven languages. In 2000 she worked with Hawking, helping edit his book The Universe in a Nutshell.

Kitty grew up in San Antonio, Texas, moved to New York City at the age of nineteen to study at the Juilliard School of Music, and lived for forty-eight years in New York City and Chester, New Jersey. She and her husband now divide their time between Cambridge and South Carolina. They have three grown children and two grandchildren.

Visit Kittys website at www.kitty-ferguson.com

About the Book

Stephen Hawking is one of the most remarkable figures of our time a Cambridge genius who has earned international celebrity and become an inspiration to those who have witnessed his triumph over disability. This is Hawkings life story by Kitty Ferguson, written with help from Hawking himself and his close associates.

Fergusons Stephen Hawkings Quest for a Theory of Everything was a Sunday Times bestseller in 1992. She has now transformed that short book into a hugely expanded, carefully researched, up-to-the-minute biography giving a rich picture of Hawkings life his childhood, the heart-rending beginning of his struggle with motor neurone disease, his ever-increasing international fame, and his long personal battle for survival in pursuit of a scientific understanding of the universe. Throughout, Kitty Ferguson also summarizes and explains the cutting-edge science in which Hawking has been engaged.

Stephen Hawking is written with the clarity and simplicity for which all Kitty Fergusons books have been praised. The result is a captivating account of an extraordinary life and mind.

Acknowledgements

I WISH TO THANK STEPHEN HAWKING FOR HIS TIME AND patience in helping me understand his theories, and for putting up with some terribly nave questions from me.

I am grateful to my agents, Brie Burkeman and Rita Rosenkranz, and my editors, Sally Gaminara at Transworld Publishers and Luba Ostashevsky at Palgrave Macmillan.

I am also grateful to the following for their assistance in many ways, including reading and checking over portions of this book and conversing with me about the subjects discussed in it. Some of the people listed below have had no direct involvement. Some are no longer alive. But the extent to which they have helped me, through the years, understand Stephen Hawking and his work and the cience related to it, means it would be unconscionable not to thank them here.

Sidney Coleman, Judith Croasdell, Paul Davies, Bryce DeWitt, Yale Ferguson, Matthew Fremont, Joan Godwin, Andrei Linde, Sue Masey, Don Page, Malcolm Perry, Brian Pippard, Joanna Sanferrare, Leonard Susskind, Neil Turok, Herman and Tina Vetter, John A. Wheeler and Anna Zytkow.

Nonetheless, any shortcomings in this book are my full responsibility.

Kitty Ferguson

Also by Kitty Ferguson

B LACK H OLES IN S PACETIME

T HE F IRE IN THE E QUATIONS : S CIENCE ,

R ELIGION & THE S EARCH FOR G OD

P RISONS OF L IGHT : B LACK H OLES

M EASURING THE U NIVERSE:

THE H ISTORICAL Q UEST TO Q UANTIFY S PACE

S TEPHEN H AWKING: Q UEST FOR A

T HEORY OF E VERYTHING (1991 and 2001)

T HE N OBLEMAN AND H IS H OUSEDOG:

T YCHO AND K EPLER T HE U NLIKELY P ARTNERSHIP

T HAT F OREVER C HANGED O UR U NDERSTANDING OF THE H EAVENS

T HE M USIC OF P YTHAGORAS (2008)

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