In Words

Professor Hawking was a passionate supporter of the NHS. When the organisers of the ‘Bring Back the NHS’ campaign invited the professor to speak at its campaigning event at the Royal Society of Medicine in August 2017, the professor didn’t hesitate.

Professor Hawking launched the Roger Penrose Public Lecture series in recognition of Professor Penrose’s lifetime contribution to mathematical sciences. In addition, Professor Hawking was acknowledging his lengthy scientific collaboration with a close friend. Public tickets for the professor’s speech on quantum black holes were sold out in minutes.

This speech for the international charity, Sightsavers, took place in Churchill College in the University of Cambridge on Tuesday, 12th December 2017 and is the last speech that Professor Hawking made in public. It was of particular importance to the professor because of the link with his father, the renowned parasitologist, Frank Hawking.

Professor Hawking was invited by the President of the Oxford Union to give his understanding on the origin of the universe.

In 2015 Professor Hawking was invited to give the BBC Reith Lectures in January 2016. He gave the first one on Tuesday, 26th January followed by Reith Lecture 2 on Tuesday, 2nd February 2016.

Where did his ingenious ideas come from? A blend of qualities, perhaps: intuition, originality, brilliance. Einstein had the ability to look beyond the surface to reveal the underlying structure. He was undaunted by common sense, the idea that things must be the way they seemed. He had the courage to pursue ideas that seemed absurd to others.

"Is it possible to fall in a black hole, and come out in another universe? Can you escape from a black hole once you fall inside? In this lecture I talk about some of the things I've found out about black holes."

"Why are we here? Where did we come from? The answer generally given was that humans were of comparatively recent origin, because it must have been obvious, even at early times, that the human race was improving in knowledge and technology."

"In this talk, I want to ask how far can we go in our search for understanding and knowledge. Will we ever find a complete form of the laws of nature?"

"In science fiction, space and time warps are a commonplace. They are used for rapid journeys around the galaxy, or for travel through time. But today's science fiction, is often tomorrow's science fact."

"This lecture is about whether we can predict the future, or whether it is arbitrary and random. In ancient times, the world must have seemed pretty arbitrary. Disasters such as floods or diseases must have seemed to happen without warning or apparent reason."

"In this talk, I would like to speculate a little, on the development of life in the universe, and in particular, the development of intelligent life. I shall take this to include the human race, even though much of its behaviour through out history, has been pretty stupid, and not calculated to aid the survival of the species."