would make the ultimate decisions, and in essence, we were polite and we listened. we smiled. and we indicated that we wanted to see the president of the united states of america. we did not move. and it was finally recognized we had to meet with the profit of the united states on this vital issue. stories that are not written up. stories that are not, if you will, crafted in history. ...

in the great state of florida under another governor when someone raise their head above the nine affirmative-action and the call came out from ben congresswoman route, congressman meeks, and hastings that we needed a few. that great state recognized that with the coming together of the congressional black caucus, the presence of big will to say that we were in the house 25,000 people, marched to the state capital. as i recall, carter's woman, we won. so these are stories that are not chronicled. another historic life of congressman ron dellums and john

lewis, but in the annals of our mind, and written books are stories where a congressional black caucus, the congressional black caucus, excuse me, members far and wide are to be touted. i will close on this one because i -- to do sisters are no longer with us. melinda mcdonald's to became the first african-american woman to chair the house of ministration committee and to put in congress the first african american picture of a congressperson which you will find as we enter into the united states chambers of the house of representatives. after the 2004 election, rose to the house and said i, too, have american. this election was unfair. members also rose in 2010 and did something that has not been done for eons where you except

the tallying of the electoral college and 2,000 members of the congressional black caucus and arrived in washington, went on the floor, and respectfully objected one after another. so you can see that it is a place where much may not be written, but we are grateful for the work they have done. i also encourage you to my last closing to go visit. we hope to move and a rival plan, but she, in fact, is the first and only statute of an african-american woman in the united states congress, legislation that i introduced and replaced her in the united states capitol just a few years ago with the support of all of the members of the congressional black caucus and certainly at that time senator hillary clinton. we can do things together. we can collaborate, and we should never leave who we are outside the door for our history

is too precious to ever leave behind. thank you, congressman. [applause] >> and on that note i would like to give another round of applause for our sponsor, covers one wilson. [applause] and thank you all for this wonderful program, and have a wonderful black history month. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> interested in american history? watch american history television on c-span three. every weekend 48 hours a people and events that help document the american story. visit c-span.org / history for more of direction.

quicksands now kitty ferguson talks about stephen hawking is life and work at princeton university in new jersey. it's about an hour. >> well, it is a pleasure and privilege to have been invited here to talk to you about stephen hawking and about my experiences writing a book about him. an unfettered mind. as it is called in britain, his life and work. some of you may already know his science well. nearly everybody knows something about him as a person. his disability, is legendary courage, his arm like the celebrity, and then of u.s. new rumors about him as well. but he is more of a celebrity. he actually is a real person.

it has been my like to get to know him just a little bit. i would not claim -- it would be inaccurate to say and know him well. in fact, i think it might be inaccurate to say that more than two or three people and the world of stephen hawking what. even they have their doubts. the way he communicates, through his computer, using very few words which it takes a long time to produce means there's always something of a distance. and his -- he doesn't give very much away. he says executive of the wants to say no more. furthermore, he has no body language. isn't that a computer voice conveys no emotion whatsoever. when you're sitting with them you often wonder whether he's telling it soaker not. but he does have facial expression still. and the people who made that star trek episode with them had

him playing a poker game with isaac newton, albert einstein, and star tracks data. those people were made, the variety of specialists russians. it doesn't sound exactly like a poker game, but evidently he impressed them. he has lost some of the mobility since then, but he still has that great big wonderful brand. the history of my book, this book to my 18 months ago when my publisher in great britain passed me to update a little book that they have published back in 1991. twenty years ago. call stephen hawking the quest for the theory of everything. at that time they have published that as a little paperback, and it had become a times best seller in britain.

what they will -- what they want to know is to me to update and change a little bit so that they could make it into an e-book, which have never been done before. i began to work on it. as soon realized that a little updating and a little tweaking of the earlier chapters really wasn't going to do it. i ended up riding a whole new book which cannibalize the old book. it is critical of him in some places, not completely complementary, but he did give his blessing to the riding. however, he did not have any control about what i said that. i did let him read it. of course. i pass by him all the quotations that would be used. but that is the only control that anybody had. but so much that happened since 1989. so much science, so much new

material about relationships and his life, so much new material about events in his life that had happened a for 1989 that i had covered some what in the old book. this had to be completely new. the research was not entirely in scientific papers, scientific journals, books, interviews, newspaper articles and britain and america. my husband is an academic. his field is a global system of global economics, global everything to do it globalism. and we have many friends who go on sabbatical. during that 20 years since i wrote that first book about steven hawking all these friend sent me clippings about steven hawking from all over the world. last year i got up the box. some of bibliography includes things like that china morning news, the west australian, the

in the times, things like that. you might get the impression that ferguson really does exhaustive research over the world, but those clippings were sent to me. another slightly unorthodox source was cambridge in england itself. my husband and i lived there for part of every year. we have been going there ever since we first went there on sabbatical ourselves in 1986. we know that town well, and we know a lot of people there. and everybody who goes, you encounter people who have little stories to tell about stephen hawking. unlike the people. the woman because my hair has a relative who was working as a carpenter on the house when stephen hawking said willis shares slipped on the ice and turnover. this is a man was the first to get to him and cover him with a jacket and called the emergency

people. someone else had an automobile accident. the driver of the other car was jane have, steven hawkins first wife. a lot of people at the college were affiliated. gary steven up and down the stairs before the college had an elevator for what was called the astronomy groups at the time of these -- is not -- is not gossip, is as interesting level of incidence. stephen hawking had lived in that town for 50 years, and it is a small town. when silence in writing this book was the certain @booktv was writing the book, steven hawking, an unfettered mind, not the legend of stephen hawking. i think any biographer has an almost irresistible urge to fictionalize their subjects. and i do wonder what i did.

because it is even more of a problem when it is a historical subjects. there you get all the information together that can and do the best you can. when it's somebody is still alive you really have a certain obligation to them to make a little more real, to keep a low more authentic. and i have the advantage of being able to talk with him, not a lot, but occasionally when i had a new book coming out or taken a copy. i would ask him a question. going for that purpose. but through the years, and especially when i was writing this book was seen him in person. i would think about what i had written about them and would think, oh, isn't quite right. i have gone a little bit astray from the real stephen hawking. a fictionalized a little bit. it's so easy to do. the words, the tone of the paragraph, the hertz to make

something to solo more dramatic, more funny. so easy to do and so hard to resist. i also obliged to respect his our interpretation of himself in a way that you wouldn't do with this sort of figured. faugh taken me to task for writing to on critical a biography, but what they would like, i think, is the biography, 15 years after it died. when you really can step back and evaluate a person a little better than you can and still live. but it's not uncritical. he's critical of places. as a matter of fact, i wondered, you know, what he would think a certain places. he's known to get very angry with writers and people did try to interpret his life. but there was -- overcame, and

my invitation to the 70th birthday party was i revoked. so i think it passed mustard or else he did recall. as many of you know, i'm not a mathematician or a scientist by training, although science and mathematics have been part of my life since i was also of. my degrees are in music from the juilliard school, and i very often, is 48, i decided to put all that aside and start writing books and lecturing about science, its history, and scientists. the popular market. intelligent people who aren't scientists. we all hear that there is somehow a connection between music and mathematics. we don't often hear about a physician deciding to read a science book. is not unheard of. some people said perhaps chilly air had nest in a physics

department. but that is not the reason. does not debt. i never took physics, so i don't know. but was reading a brief history that was a watershed in my mind. i did understand, i had to work ended lopez, but i understood it. i thoroughly enjoyed it. my husband was still mystified remembering that he would watch me giggling while i read it. but it is an enjoyable book. a lot of funny things in it. i must have shared my enthusiasm for the science with my daughter, my eight year-old daughter because she decided to do a science fair project on black holes. she went to a library and came home with several books. not appropriate for her age. and she also brought home that big black book. gravitation. the know that.

and very intelligent. she's grown up now, and she is something of the ways in genetics and biology, but eight years old she was not a prodigy, and there are a lot of that this did understand. we talked about a lot, and then we dance around the living room pretending we were photons and pretended we were particle paris the black hole. and the upshot was that kaywun really came up with an award winning project. it was a wonderful project, and i decided to write a book for children are young people her age about black holes. as an aside that have to mention that the physics conference that preceded steven hawking 70th birthday party in january i met charles manson. i knew.

i knew him quite well, but i have not met charles. i met him. and in conversation i mentioned. he seemed quite delighted by that. he said that think that's probably the only time in my book have been choreographed. i sure was. anyway, i decided to write a children's book on black holes. that decision led to my first meeting with stephen hawking. it was not easy to get an appointment. i got in touch with his secretary, his personal assistant to. she kept saying make an appointment and outback you, but discontinued not to happen to the part where it became embarrassing to keep telling her about. i decided to try. i knew that he often works late with his graduate assistant in his office after nearly everyone

else left. i suspect that in the evening the phone that would normally destroy in her office would ring in his office. so i give that to try. sure enough, the graduate assistant answered and he was right there with stephen hawking i told him why wanted. he said, well, and get back to you. i thought, well, i guess this the end of that. about two minutes later he found back. he said, well, steven would be happy to help you if you want to come in tomorrow at 530. so this was quite interesting. one thing, we are just getting over the flu at that time. i was afraid of taking in terms. i went quickly to the doctor the next morning to make sure would be taking any germs to stephen hawking. also, i do remember, was talking like that. i think i sounded like jackie kennedy.

the anyway, there was, 530 the next day. a dark night already. it was november. the common room where they had tea earlier in the day, completely dark except for just a little outline around steven hawkins of the start. the nyt have brought me show me away. paused, and i said, not? said, i haven't the slightest idea. i thought, isn't that frightening? this is ridiculous. i thought this is a little bit -- but felt a little bit like dorothy in the was a loss for the first time. there was an intimidating. usually when you go to look -- is a steven hawking you have somebody brookfield little bit, is ba or is a graduate assistant will tell you that you don't sit

across the desk from. there's a chair, but you don't sit there. you sit beside him so that he can both see this computer screen where he is using the words to make consensus. you also talk -- you don't second-guess him. u.s. and find the words and finish a sentence, even if you know very well or it's going in the notes going to take into minutes to get there. you wait. and once he has created the sentence across the bottom of the screen you don't have to wait for him to say it. you can continue the conversation. this kind of thing. i didn't know any of that. the only other person there that evening was a young man call one of his nurses. this segment was also there for the first time that evening. we were both equally ignorant. there was stephen hawking looking even more devastatingly disabled than i had expected.

but i waited. i wasn't sure whether ices such a conversation, but by this time he was controlling his computer with a little hand-held mouse like device degrees he was quitting that a little less, so i waited. then his voice is a low. things just became more comfortable. obviously he was comfortable with this very odd bizarre situation. so i was too. this disturbs, very quiet. he's making his words sunscreen. it's very peaceful. at the same time sort of charge of the energy. you just to the low mechanical moses. well, one of the reasons i wanted to talk with him was because i had been talking about the things i was riding in a black hole was a mystery resistance.

an accomplice of questions that they did know the answers to. i thought i'd better talk with him in. and that of other myself to think that these were set to address questions that they did know the answers. i have a feeling there versus dave questions. i think it's always more difficult for research into answer really nice questions than it is for someone with more experience in the field. john wheeler, perfectly happy to answer the most by yves questions i began to read it. but to myself that it sounded so stuffy and boring. i stopped. i apologize. i said, i'm sorry it's ounce so stuffy and boring, but this is my first book, and my editor says this is serious science and

it must be treated seriously. and stephen hawking answered, it should be fun. i notice should be fun, but i don't know how to convince my editor. he quit the low more. the auricle spoke. tell him i said so. as you might guess, i didn't have any problem with my editor after that. this is more than just and enduring will anecdote. it should be fine, the spirit in which he has done all this science, a spirit in which he has conveyed that science through many people who have no scientific background, many young people. he doesn't just tried to explain his science tell us. he tries to take us along a misadventure. that's the way it works. now, i've had backstage

experience of all that. in 2000 he was writing universe in a nutshell. my publisher in new york, also his publisher in new york asked me whether they actually hired me to help but the book. my duty was to help him make it simple, help him make it more easy to understand. stephen was okay with that. i didn't know how he would take that, especially since his editor sent me his draft a part of the book. i had been trying to help for understand that this was the right to make a buck. she had some doubts. i made it battle boxes in the margins of three that commands of the more not complementary. he was a carrot that. so we worked together by e-mail with a couple of months. then i was in the united states

then. i went over to cambridge to spend a couple of weeks there with him in his office. so there we were, facing the screen where he was choosing his words, and another screen which had a manuscript of the book on a. i was prepared very carefully for this by knowing exactly which phrases, which pair branson solana was going to bring to his attention. so we scroll down. i set down. i think the words are too much physics jargon. i think their needs to be stated in everyday words, if you can do that. and so, the slow cooking increase in his voice said it seems clear to me. and i thought, oh, we really are in trouble. this is not going to work. then i looked over him. i saw this big smile. he was looking at me.

i knew he was having me on. it all work very well. he was very conscientious of taking my advice about what was too difficult. i also prepared ahead of time many ways that i would have rewritten it to make it simpler, analogies, suggestions. he didn't take any of my suggestions, he did nonself is always. he said i get very upset when people say that i helped to write that book or heaven forbid that i collaborated with him, and i do hear that sometimes. people talking. that is not true. i was the guinea pig. i was a burst the try and on and see where it needed to be simpler. i do think that book turned out very well. i like to think that i did contribute something to hit by telling him what needed to be simpler.

so, when people ask me, you know, what is that has brought him all this worldwide attention and made him such a popular, well-known figure and made him such a celebrity, one of the things i do point to is the way that he does make his science such an adventure for us all, but that doesn't explain it all, of course. another part of the explanation is, the area of science he works in, his part of science does conjure up a sense of wonder. a sense of treading in the borderland of human knowledge, black holes, origin of the universe to my questions about whether the loss of information in black holes undermines physics, the possibility that our universe is one of, perhaps, an infinite number of the

universe is connected by a wormholes, perhaps. he appears to venture, and he dared to try to take us with him to those remote outposts. the no need to the unknown. the outposts that john wheeler used to call the fleming ramparts of the world. -- science fiction to us, but steven asked whether he ever has written science fiction and his answer was, i hope not. at his 60th birthday party tin years ago fed -- what the heaven for? now, had gone beyond his depth and should be forgiven for it. at least i don't think that's what he meant.

stephen asks daunting, arguably unanswerable questions, things like what is it that creates fire into the equation and makes the universe for them to describe. why is this something rather than nothing? why does the universe go to the bother of existing? these are questions that strayed into philosophy and religion. there are questions that cross the sensible science. it was irrelevant to the everyday person. the cover of his book, his recent book promises that this book is going to tell as the ultimate answers. it doesn't actually. stephen goes on asking the question. going on to say, i'd long to know these answers. also, in that same but the brides that it is meaningless to

ask whether the answers he proposes or anyone else proposes at that level really represent reality. causes his more dramatic reduction rest atheistic statement that he often makes to the media, whether you agree with him or not, a little too earthbound, a little too glib. more so than he usually is. but it wouldn't be correct to stop with his science in trying to explain his appeal. he would probably wish it otherwise, but his disability and even more than that, the astonishing good humoured way he simply dismisses that disability , of vital part of his public image. wakening, his wife. wrote about a kind of help, a

strength, a grace that goes beyond the deaths of any illness he could have been describing stephen hawking. another of the questions i am frequently asked about steven is what is his most significant contribution to science? i believe most of his academic colleagues would say that it would be his establishment that black holes in it blackbody radiation, also known as talking radiation. this is an unexpected discovery back in the 1970's, and expected to steven, certainly unexpected to the rest of the scientific community. took some time to be accepted. you get some ridicule at first. but it has stood the test of time, and it is likely to send the tested more time. since then his work has become more speculative. testing big ideas, throwing out mind-boggling suggestions and

proposals. and dealing with those more fundamental questions. for instance, his no boundary. for the origin of the universe in which in the very early universe the dimension that we think of time -- has time was the fourth space to mention. now, stephen seems today from all lot of what he has written, to assume that the no boundary proposal is correct. and that it is safe to build other theories around the new boundary condition. there would not agree that there were it not fully accepted to that degree. other proposals. the labyrinth of universes' and were balls and all that.

pre speculative. he is coming to to his colleague i would rather be white than rigorous -- right than rigorous. a shift in his way of doing science. what he meant was it would take too long trying to underpin everything that is unassailable that mathematics your level to miss the forest for the trees. he would prefer to be, perhaps among 90 percent certain and then move on. now, his latest idiocy of not receive the same level of acceptance as talking radiation has, at least not yet, but they do serve a certain purpose. he throws out these ideas, and everybody scurries around, causing a lot of interest and activity. a lot of people who do a lot of mathematics and calculations to see whether he's right, so it's all for nothing. is that historians science-fiction.

and his tendency to become more speculative, one of his recent contributions, and this was something that he insisted had to be in my book. it was something i had not realized he had done. he pointed me to the papers. to suggest a way of determining from evidence actually available in our universe from the cosmic microwave background radiation, to determine from evidence there whether or not our university is part of a multiversity of this sort suggested by internal inflation. it is not all just wild speculation. they made a proposal that can be tested or potentially can be tested. you have to wait for the data from the satellite, and maybe even sublets beyond that. but it is possible, perhaps, to test this. in my biography i have

intermingled section seven to do with hawkins personal story and his science. all this is chapter by chapter. so you have this personal story line that you expect from my biography beginning with his childhood in a loving, very eccentric family, a draftee, spooky house in st. augustine, following through his childhood, teenage years, his wild days at oxford when he did practically no word whatsoever, and then his first year as a graduate student of cambridge when he was diagnosed with motor neuron disease, lou gehrig's disease. then his courtship of jane wilde, later to be jane hawking, very moving story because it took place in the context of his coming to terms with this disease are back -- this birth

of his children, the failure of that first marriage, second marriage, all the things you expect from a biography. i also included descriptions of my own experiences with him, some of which i mentioned already. there is just a crack -- cornucopia of science, not only his science, but the science that has most interested him and employ some, and then there are all sorts of wonderful steps that he has made with his colleague. a black hole, really such a thing as the similarity. his information director of the loss. so many deaths. keeping countering that.

the document when his thumbprint on it. explain the science. what i hoped, the slightly simpler level that he explained in his own books. it is one of my great joys to find ways to explain things simply in ways that can be understood. my father was a musician, but he also loved mathematics and science. when every -- he read a lot of science. what he said was that -- what he said was that he never felt he really understood anything unless he could explain it to us kids. this is when i was about nine years old. if he could not explain its s he didn't really an extended. also inspiration, john really here at princeton.

the way he did the little verizon they states planned things. one of the greatest compliments i ever had, but one of my dries up on his office door. he didn't put it there to show what should not be done. but one of my favorite reviews of any of my books was one that appeared in periodicals that i think was called the taxi drivers time. this review, this was a review of my first stephen hawking but in 1989. it said, this is the book that tells us what the bloody hell it was all about. [laughter] for those who never made it past chapter two. then i thought, well, i hope that 22 years later i am still capable of that kind of explanation. if you follow his science chronologically through his life

as i have done in his book, rather than getting it piecemeal, as we often do, you discover that he has of healthy habit of pulling the rug up from under his own discoveries and his own assertions. once wrote that of all the stereotypes that have plagued men and women of science, surely one has brought harm. science can -- scientists can be pictured as evil, mad, cold, self-centered, absent minded, even square, yet survive easily. unfortunately they are often pictured as right, and that can distort the picture science. now, whether or not you agree with that stephen hawking certainly seems to have done his best to raise the stereotyped by changing his mind so frequently.

in the 1960's he concluded that the universe had to have begun as a singularity with everything compressed to a point of an infinite density and space time curvature will laws of physics and all hope of scientific explanation breaks down. however, in the 1980's he returned to contemplating the early universe with jim harding. instead of bringing in reinforcements from quantum theory and discovered that using imaginary time, which is a mathematical device which allows the time dimension to become a space to mention, chronological time loses all meaning. the singularity is geared away, and the universe doesn't really have a beginning. meanwhile, he had discovered that the area of the event horizon, the border of a black

hole and never gets smaller. and then we're talking radiation he discovered that it could get smaller. and the upshot of that was another reversal. after years of insisting that everything that happens has happened or ever will happen was determined by either god or the theory, he came up with something called the information paradox. the question is, what happens when a black hole grows smaller, smaller, and smaller and eventually disappears entirely? what happens the things that were trapped inside a? what happens to the star that collapsed. where does it all go? and stephen was insisting that all this information trapped in the black hole was lost irretrievably from our universe.

now, naively we think -- does not really a problem collapsed, maybe some guesses. traditionally a few unmatched socks, astronauts who should not have gone there in the first place, should have done better. you know, this is pretty trivial when you talk about the universe, but that's not the case. such information threatens to undermine the whole of physics, and much of our everyday view of life. the predictability the science depends on as well as my reliance on a dependable way. potentially undermining the loss of affirmation from our universe . in 2004 hocking came up with what he felt was a solution to this problem. he didn't have to worry about it anymore. but some of his more astute colleagues think that his

arguments for the information paradox or more powerful than the solution. if all this wasn't enough, it all seems minor in contrast to his most recent announcements that he suspects that it is not going to be possible for anyone ever to discover a fundamental theory of the universe, the theory of everything. which is something he had spent his life hoping for. but the theory has fragmented. you can only know approximations . the string theory and was supergravity. but we don't know how to the undermined the deep teary, a simple equation and arguably we never will.

that is a huge turnaround for have. another change in his thinking. change in his attitude toward the anthropic principle, anthropic thinking which in case you need reminding, the anthropic principle answers the question why is the universe as we observe it perfectly fine to end for the emergence of intelligent life in our existence. the fine-tuning of the origin of the universe is so precise and so on likely, since to be nothing short of miraculous. the anthropic answer then, its simplest form to the question why do we observe the universe in this way is that if it were otherwise we're not -- would not be allowed to observe an all or ask the question. now, stephen hawkins attitude toward that end up the cancer, the brief history of time in the

1980's, having a happy chance, having it all just a stroke of good fortune was, as he put it, a counsel of despair. a negation of all our hopes of understanding the underlying order of the universe. but lately he has been treating a great deal of power to anthropic thinking in something he calls his top-down approach. when he and jim hall were developing their no boundary proposal in the 1980's they used a device invented by the american businesses richard feynman, so over history. and the use of the estimate involves tracing all possible histories of a universe had been calculating which are more likely than others, which were more probable. it sounds so easy to do that with a history of our universe. we don't have concrete knowledge about.

eight to mall though we do know quite a bit about point b, where we are today. we can imagine a lot of possible . but most of them will not be fine-tuned in the way we know are hard to cut you ever sent to d. so we need a very special specific point a. it seems we do. by what miracle. stephen hawking recommends that you looked at it all from a different perspective. what he calls his top down approach. alternate alternative histories of the universe, not from point a to point b, but backwards to the present time, from point b to point to a. our presence at point b, the fact of our being here, living in this universe dictates which

history this universe could and could not have had. in essence, we create the history of the universe by being here and by observing it. take, for example, the fact that we have four dimensions, for an observable dimensions in our universe, three of space and what time. the theory, there is no overall rule that the universe would have three dimensions of space and one of time. the range of possibilities includes every matter from zero to ten space dimensions. even in some versions more than one time to mention. three dimensions of space and one of time may not be the most probable situation, but never mind that. top-down thinking. three dimensions of space and one of time is the only situation that is of interest to us. considering the universe in the zero way from the bottom of this

seems to be no discoverable reason why the laws of nature are what they are and not something different. we do observe the laws of nature to be what they are, and we are here. why not start with that? our presence is significant. and as he restates the anthropic principles obviously the plan that supports life and examines the world around him, they're bound to find the environment says was a condition that required to exist. so just as we all such is the history of our earth and a cosmic environment that allows us to exist. that's the top-down approach. now, you might expect, this is his top down cosmology, what is preaching to say that we, the observers, are the answer to the

fundamental question, why is there something rather than nothing? what is it that breeds fire into the equation and makes it for them to describe? maybe we are where the buck stops, maybe we are the first call. maybe we don't even need a creator. all of that exists. no other argument is possible or required. but he doesn't use that argument. he doesn't use that in his book the grand design, and heated news that in a discussion he and i had in november of 2010. whenever i asked him a question i tried to put it in a form that he can answer yes and no. my question -- saves time. he usually goes on and talks about it. i try. but i mentioned the question. he opposed the brief history of time. what is it that creates fire into the equations and makes it easier for them to describe?

using top down thinking is the answer. he answered no. that was the end of that matter. it would be interesting to hear him, a discussion with john wheeler who, of course, is no longer with this. pose something called the observer depended universe in which we can't have the laws of physics, laws of nature, universe can exist unless there are observers. it makes you wonder. if there were no observers, a free disappeared from the scene and there are no longer any observers, the universe anymore. a very interesting question, but it does pose the same way of thinking, this top-down way of thinking. now, whenever i finish a draft of a book i have my has been treated because my husband steal this global studies he is a very good example of the

target audience he claims that if he can understand it anybody can. he is not really that. but he read the close of the book. quoted stephen hawking as saying something about he's still a child, never grown up who. still asking how and why questions and occasionally finding an answer dissatisfied. my husband occasionally finding an answer to satisfy some. his opinion flow. i thought, yes. that is exactly right. that is the nature of his adventure. find the answer that satisfies him. mr. hawkins legacy. what will -- young enough to be

alive maybe 30 or 50 years from now. yes. will he be saying that? i know what he would like. he would like to be remembered. if everyone could forget about the fact that he had been disabled, that will be fun with them. i think the author john milton, press law. he wrote that he was completely blind. how many people actually know that? does not what you think of. i lifted up in which expedia. there is no mention of his blindness until way down many paragraphs. just mentioned in passing. i thought, when stephen love that's got to have himself remember for a science. nobody even thought of the fact u.s. disabled. >> we don't know what would be remembered. the proposal ever become part of the mainstream of theoretical physics and cosmology.

to some interesting beautiful proposal. people go on in the troubled, the affirmation paradox, things like -- seems to be sitting in the cells now. i think that his legacy definitely will be twofold. what he is generated about science and as a policy. when i attended the academic conference that preceded his 70th birthday back in january. all these because they had all the gray eminences of this field and had all these young people to.

the young people, physicists that already are really contributing. well known. import universities. again and again i heard them say , heard someone say it was reading a brief history of time. as while working in cosmology. that's a wonderful thing. also i think he will continue to stand as a towering example of courage and determination and good humor in the face of overwhelming obstacles, real-life to restorations' that human beings can accomplish. the kind of things they can say in the kind of work they can do.

it does not to be when the sun is shining in here in the peak of health. as you may know, stephen hawking did not get his 70th birthday party. he was too ill, in the hospital, very seriously ill. i think most people -- every time, oh, that's the end. this time it seemed worse than usual. but i just had an e-mail this week from his secretary that sheared huge effort and determination, he is back in the office. he is there. the first time he was actually on a respirator most of the time, which is not sure before. nevertheless, he is intending in march to come over to texas for the conference at. >> branch. to me to go out to caltech. this is a man who just will be defeated by his physical problem. amazing.

i am the same age as stephen. i turned 73 weeks before he did, and i did tell him he'd better respected elders. so i will be around 50 years from now. now unless we have a huge breakthrough in health. but as long as i am alive i will remember how much his time it has been exploring less science. the books had been written. a wonderful smile that would let the universe. he really has had a tough move through life. if you talk drug in terms of the bridge game he was still a ridiculously and balanced and. he certainly made a grand slam of it. he has set an example for all of us, and i know that not

everything he has done has been sold laudable. he can be arrogant. he can be self-centered, and maybe he has to be self-centered to survive. but i have gotten to know him just a little. i really like the man. thank you. [applause] >> is anybody have any questions to iraq one of my bows to the most basic audiences. black holes, scientifically inapt. i don't think he fits that category. but, you know, don't be afraid to ask dave questions. i'm sure no one here would ask

and i question, but you're welcome to do it. app, perhaps, said that stephen hawking says nobody has the question. that means nobody in this today think for everybody understood everything. this wasn't that kind of a lecture. anyway, with that encourage, yes? [inaudible question] >> she has three children. the same age as my children, so they're going to be about 43, 44, 41, and 31 in age. [inaudible question] and. >> his oldest son is information technology. he has a degree -- let's see which college. a major, but i'm not that much sure. that's what he does now.

jane hawking claims that was something his interest, really brought to a head when he was just a kid. they have sabbatical a caltech. he met another boy there who was really into that. that's what got him interested. i think i experienced this myself. when you go on sabbatical and becomes a watershed for the old family, not just you. that's when i started writing of a science. went on sabbatical. our children look at that as a watershed. but, yes, his daughter -- his daughter has written a couple of children's books with stephen called the george books. cosmic and the key to the universe. they are wonderful books. had doesn't elaborate. no. recommended. they are wonderful, fiction.