Free Stephen Hawking by John Gribbin Page B

astronomer of the day, Fred Hoyle. The catch was that to be accepted for Cambridge, he had to achieve a first-class honors degree, the highest possible qualification at Oxford.
    The night before finals, Hawking panicked. He tossed and turned all night and got very little sleep. When morning came, he dressed up in subfusc (the regulation black gown, white shirt, and bow-tie worn by all examinees), left his rooms bleary-eyed and anxious, and headed for the examination halls a few yards along the High. Out on the street, hundreds of other identically dressed students streamed along the pavements, some clutching books under their arms, others puffing maniacally on their last cigarette before entering the examination hall—a feast for the tourist’s camera but abject misery for those having to sit through days of examinations.
    The examination halls themselves do their best to intimidate: high ceilings, great chandeliers hanging down from the void, row upon row of stark wooden desks and hard chairs. Invigilators pace up and down the rows, keeping an eagle eye on the candidates in their multitude of poses—staring atthe ceiling or the middle distance, pen protruding between clenched teeth, or terminally absorbed, hunched over a manuscript in a free-flow trance. Hawking woke up a little as the paper was placed on the desk before him and duly followed through his plan of attempting only the theoretical problems.
    Exams over, he went off to celebrate the end of finals with the others of his year, guzzling champagne from the bottle and joining the throng of students ritualistically stopping the traffic on the High and spraying bubbly into the summer sky. After a short pause and a period of nail-biting anticipation, the results were announced. Hawking was on the borderline between a first and a second. To decide his fate, he would have to face a viva, a personal interview with the examiners.
    He was fully aware of his image at the university. He had the impression, rightly or wrongly, that he was considered a difficult student in that he was scruffy and seemingly lazy, more interested in drinking and having fun than working seriously. However, he underestimated how highly thought of were his abilities. Not only that, but as Berman is fond of saying, Hawking was in his element at a viva, because if the examiners had any intelligence they would soon see that he was cleverer than they were. At the interview he made a pronouncement that perfectly encapsulates the man’s matter-of-fact attitude and at the same time may have just saved his career. The chief examiner asked him to tell the board of his plans for the future.
    â€œIf you award me a first,” he said, “I will go to Cambridge. If I receive a second, I shall stay in Oxford, so I expect you will give me a first.”
    They did.

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    DOCTORS AND DOCTORATES
    I t has been said that Cambridge is the only true university town in England. Oxford is a much larger city and has, lying beyond the ring road, heavy industrial areas nestling next to one of Europe’s largest housing estates. Cambridge is altogether quainter and more thoroughly dominated by academia. Although evidence suggests that the University of Cambridge was established by defectors from Oxford, both seats of learning were created at around the same time in the twelfth century, using as their model the University ofParis. Like Oxford, Cambridge University is a collection of colleges under the umbrella of a central university authority. Like Oxford, it attracts the very best scholars from around the world and has a global reputation, paralleled only by its great rival and historical twin a mere eighty miles away. And, like Oxford, it is steeped in tradition, drama, and history.
    Having just returned from abroad, Stephen Hawking, B.A. (Hon.), arrived in Cambridge in October 1962, exchanging the scorched, barren landscape of the Middle East for autumnal wind and drizzle across the darkening fields of