The Birkbeck Years
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3,992 words · no email, no account
No. 222 · Science · Science
The Synthesizer Voice
a biography of Stephen William Hawking
What the book is
Cambridge, 1965. A twenty-three-year-old graduate student delivers a viva voce defence of his thesis on the singularity theorems while holding the lectern with both hands to keep upright. The motor-neurone diagnosis is two and a half years old. The internal examiner's report calls the work "the most extraordinary doctoral submission this committee has examined." The next year, the thesis becomes a Cambridge fellowship.
Eleanor Whitlock follows Stephen Hawking from that viva to the synthesizer voice — through the work on cosmological singularities, the 1974 paper that black holes are not in fact black, the bet with Kip Thorne (paid out, in 1990, in a year's subscription to Penthouse), the divorce, the second marriage, the second divorce, the public-intellectual phase that A Brief History of Time made possible and that the family later said they regretted.
Drawing on the DAMTP archive, Hawking's working papers, the technical correspondence with Bekenstein and Penrose, and conversations with the graduate students he supervised, Hartwell refuses the inspirational-overcomer framing in favour of the work itself. What emerges is a study of theoretical physics in the late twentieth century, of a man who measured his own life by the equations he had not yet finished, and of the cost — to his marriages, his children, and his body — of refusing to slow down.
At a glance
- Subject
- Stephen William Hawking
- Shelf
- Science · Science
- Written by
- Eleanor Whitlock
- Chapters
- 18 across 196 pages
- Narrated by
- Miles Ashby
- Editions
- Paperback · Hardcover · EPUB · Audiobook
- Authorisation
- Unauthorised — no subject, estate or label had approval over the text.
Contents · 18 chapters
- 01Galileo's AnniversaryRead free
- 02St Albans Boy3,521 words
- 03Oxford and the Boat Club3,508 words
- 04The Diagnosis4,348 words
- 05Properties of Expanding Universes3,851 words
- 06Penrose, and the Cosmos with No Beginning Outside It3,448 words
- 07The Equation3,245 words
- 08Caltech, the Lucasian Chair, and the Family Year4,095 words
- 09Geneva3,886 words
- 10The Book3,358 words
- 11A Marriage Ends3,709 words
- 12The Universe in a Brand3,155 words
- 13Dublin: Conceding3,087 words
- 14Elaine, and the Allegations3,399 words
- 15Zero Gravity, the Caribbean, and the Public Performance3,659 words
- 16The Voice in Old Age3,083 words
- 17Pi Day3,065 words
- 18The Soft Hair3,328 words
The opening chapter is published in full — read it here.
Editions
- Paperback · $19.99
- 6 × 9 in · 196 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback
- Hardcover · $24.99
- 6 × 9 in · 196 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · case laminate on the same text block
- EPUB · $3.99
- EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books
ISBN 979-8-90470-023-2 - Audiobook · $5.99
- Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Miles Ashby
ISBN 979-8-90623-036-2
The printed edition has no ISBN registered yet. It affects library and retail listing, not your order.
Questions
01Who is The Synthesizer Voice about?
Stephen William Hawking. The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case The Synthesizer Voice — and the name goes on the line underneath.
02Is this an authorised biography?
No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented.
03Can I read some of it before buying?
Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 3,992 words of the book.
04How long is it?
About 64,000 words, 18 chapters, 196 pages in the paperback.
05What is the printed book like?
6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf.
