Graham Farmelo's Biography Explores Stephen Hawking's Flaws

Graham Farmelo's new biography, "Hawking," presents a comprehensive and accessible portrait of physicist Stephen Hawking, acknowledging his scientific brilliance and extraordinary determination while also detailing significant personal flaws. The book suggests that the scientific community and the public largely overlooked Hawking's less admirable traits, such as his overweening ambition, self-promotion, repeated failure to acknowledge the work of others, sexism, and controlling behavior. Farmelo posits that these flaws were often ignored due to the widespread public and scientific focus on Hawking's disability. This dynamic, the author implies, has made it challenging for society to fully process the complex reality of Hawking's character.

The biography contrasts with earlier critical assessments of Hawking. The reviewer recounts an experience in 2018 when their unadoring review of Hawking's final book, a posthumously published collection of essays, was suppressed by New Scientist. The publication cited that it was "too early" to offer criticism for the physicist, who had died at age 76 that March. Similarly, in 2021, a British publisher reportedly declined to release Charles Seife's exposé, "Hawking Hawking," which detailed Hawking's alleged bullying and self-aggrandizing behavior, again suggesting that the timing was not yet appropriate for such critical accounts.

Farmelo's approach in "Hawking" aims to provide a more balanced perspective, recognizing Hawking's profound contributions to cosmology and theoretical physics, including his groundbreaking work on black holes and the theory of relativity. Hawking, who was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at age 21, became a global icon for his scientific achievements and his resilience in the face of severe physical limitations. His popular science book, "A Brief History of Time," published in 1988, became an international bestseller, making complex scientific concepts accessible to a wide audience. The biography delves into the period of his academic career at the University of Cambridge, where he held the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics, a position previously held by Isaac Newton. Farmelo's work seeks to reconcile the public image of a universally admired scientific figure with the private individual who exhibited traits that were often at odds with that perception. The narrative explores how Hawking's ambition fueled his scientific endeavors but also contributed to interpersonal conflicts and a perceived lack of acknowledgment for collaborators and intellectual predecessors, a theme that Farmelo argues was often overshadowed by the narrative of his physical struggle and scientific genius.