Science's Brightest Star STEPHEN HAWKING 1942-2018

His brashness, sense of humour and ability to explain complex ideas simpler made Stephen Hawking a cultural phenomenon

- Navin J. Antony

The genius of Stephen Hawking was that he won even when he lost bets. In 1975, five years after he became a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), he made a wager with friend and fellow physicist Kip Thorne. Hawking said a recently discovered dark star called Cygnus X-1 wasn’t a black hole. Thorne said it was. The wager was a lifelong subscription of Penthouse.

Hawking had by then established himself as an authority on black holes—giant celestial spaces whose gravitational fields are so powerful that they suck up all matter and radiation near them. Thorne knew that the crafty Englishman would win both ways. Losing the bet would prove Hawking’s theories on black holes right. Winning it would give him, through Penthouse, an opportunity to unravel what he described the other great mystery of the universe: women. Hawking called the bet his insurance policy.

He conceded defeat in 1990, after scientists reached a consensus that Cygnus X-1 was indeed a black hole, proving several of his theories right.

Seven years later, Hawking and Thorne challenged their CalTech colleague John Preskill. The duo argued that it was impossible to retrieve ‘information’ (radiation or matter) once it entered a black hole. The wager was an encyclopaedia, “from which information can be retrieved at will”, said the signed document of the bet.

Hawking lost that one, too—but, it was his own later research that proved him wrong. In the past two decades, he lost more wagers than a compulsive gambler could afford to lose. But, more often than not, he came out the real winner, because of his penchant to bet against himself and question his own research and intellect.