by Jane Hawking
7
Upward Mobility
Llandogo with all its obstacles in 1971 turned out to be a useful rehearsal for the next summer’s excursion – to the annual summer school in physics at Les Houches in the French Alps on the lower slopes of Mont Blanc – which was the brainchild of Cecile de Witt and her American husband Bryce. The mother of four daughters and an outstanding physicist at a time when women physicists were rare, Cecile was one of those capable women – not unlike some of the Fellows of Lucy Cavendish – of whom I stood in awe. From her home in America she organized the conferences in her native France and invited her own hand-picked participants. At Les Houches she supervised all the arrangements, led the sessions and climbed the mountains. For Stephen, she commissioned a labour force, brought in bulldozers to construct a ramp up to the chalet where we were to stay for six weeks, and made every possible provision for our comfort. She could hardly be blamed for the weather in the Alps that summer.
Stephen flew out to Geneva with his colleagues while my parents and I drove the rest of the family to Paris for the overnight Motorail to Saint-Gervais, some twenty miles from Les Houches. We happened to arrive in Paris on the chaotic weekend of le grand rush in late July, when the whole of France goes on holiday, but somehow Dad managed to find the Motorail depot and somehow, with our small charges, we managed to fight our way through the massed hordes of travellers on to the train at the Gare de Lyon. The next morning, with the nightmarish journey behind us, the sun shone as we relaxed over breakfast of coffee and croissants outside the station at Saint-Gervais, and it still shone, bathing the white peaks in glistening magnificence, as we excitedly embarked on the winding journey up the Chamonix valley to the very heart of the mountains.
Scarcely had we climbed the steep track to the summer school, a cluster of chalets and lecture halls set among meadows and pine trees, than the sun disappeared, a mist descended and it began to rain. It rained and it rained and it was cold. Water dripped from every roof, every gutter, every branch and every blade of grass, and Cecile’s carefully constructed ramp soon turned into a mud slide. In the middle of July, Dad and I had to resort to feeding the woodburning stove an endless supply of logs to keep the chalet warm and to dry the nappies with which every corner was festooned. Dear little Lucy did her best to help by spontaneously potty-training herself at the age of twenty months.
In these circumstances, despite the elevation and the vertical nature of all expeditions, Stephen was happy. From morning till night he was surrounded by colleagues from all over the world whose driving passion was the study of black holes. Occasionally some of them went off in groups for the day, weather permitting, to climb Mont Blanc, but that only added to the excitement and the tension and lent an additional aura of superiority to their overall image. Nothing was too difficult for this breed of superhumans who were capable of mastering the secrets of the Universe and also of conquering any physical challenge on earth. Stephen of course was included in this category, since obviously he was fighting his own physical challenges with the gritty courage of a hardened mountaineer. The rest of us – the hangers-on, the wives, mothers, grandparents and babies – were left to our own devices, to shop and cook and find our own entertainment. Raids on the local supermarket for its somewhat limited range of supplies provided eggs for a staple diet of omelettes cooked over a bottled-gas stove. Although there was a restaurant which catered for the delegates, it was too expensive for the whole family to eat there all the time, and in any case the conversation at table inevitably veered, in the friendliest possible way, towards the rarefied subjects of black holes or alpine mountaineering in which we – that is the family – were not able to participate constructively.
As and when the rain eased off we would set out for a walk, under the dripping branches, up the mountainside at the back of the chalet, past the lecture hall into the wood to search for wild raspberries and blueberries. Then we encountered another unexpected challenge. While Robert, true to form, would charge ahead, Lucy adamantly refused to walk more than a couple of yards at a time and would then put her arms up, wanting to be carried. Because Robert’s limitless energy now seemed quite normal, Lucy’s reluctance to move perplexed me, just as her sleepiness when new-born had perplexed Stephen. Our progress up the mountain track was slow, and rarely did we reach the clearing where the raspberries and blueberries grew before it started to rain again. On one of these expeditions, an extraordinary thing happened.
For once Lucy was actually walking on her own two feet with Robert, ten yards or so ahead of her grandparents and me. Bringing up the rear I was enjoying an unaccustomed freedom of movement, unencumbered by any other person, small or large, when suddenly I saw the children stop in their tracks. They stood stock-still, whispering to each other very quietly and, beckoning to us to lower our voices, pointed to the ground. There, wending its way across the path from one side to the other was the smallest, most perfectly formed adder, the white diamond markings on its body standing out clearly against the grey. It took no notice of us as it slithered into the undergrowth. It was beautiful to watch, but even more striking were the children’s reactions, as if some primitive instinct had warned them to stand quiet and still.
However high-powered their physics and impressive their mountaineering feats, the American participants at Les Houches brought a carefree atmosphere to the centre which helped to mitigate the effects of the rain. There was nothing superficial about their relaxed friendliness. Kip Thorne and his botanist wife, Linda, had made the break from the constraints of their Mormon background to search for broader truths unshackled by religious dogma. Whatever their private thoughts, they never voiced any criticism of the rigours of their background, but brought the positive aspects of Mormonism, a deep caring and concern for their fellow beings, to a wider world.
Jim Bardeen, the quietest, most self-effacing physicist imaginable, was working closely with Stephen and Brandon Carter on the painstaking task of constructing the laws of black-hole mechanics from the basis of Einstein’s equations of general relativity. The new set of laws detailing the physics of black holes had caused a hubbub of excitement when their similarity to the second law of thermodynamics had become apparent, and it was this similarity which was driving cosmologists to attempt to narrow the gap between thermodynamics and black holes by putting the theory of black holes into the language of thermodynamics. The laws of thermodynamics govern microcosmic operations; they dictate the behaviour of atoms and molecules, including their eventual decay into heat, which they exchange with the objects around them. However the conundrum that now faced physicists was that the laws of thermodynamics, although similar, could not work in the case of black holes, because the predictions were that nothing, not even heat, could escape from a black hole.
Stephen, Jim and Brandon were attempting to unravel this major enigma when, one afternoon, unable to endure another drop of rain, I bundled the children and their grandparents into the car and set off over the pass beyond Chamonix to Switzerland, convinced that the sun must be shining somewhere. Somewhere there must be a welcome transfer of heat from one celestial body to another, even if heat did signify decay, or “entropy” in scientific terminology. Jim’s wife, Nancy, came with us and enthralled the children, singing to them, telling them stories, sharing jokes and reciting poems all the way to Martigny – where indeed the sun was shining – and back. Through the infectious gaiety which shone from her big brown eyes, Nancy concealed the deep pain of the recent loss of both her parents.
It was also in Les Houches that Bernard Carr, Stephen’s new research student, came bounding into our lives one wet afternoon. Bernard was certainly different from the expected run of research students. He was talkative, sociable, unselfconscious, the result perhaps of being sent to boarding school at the age of six. His conversation ranged widely over many topics, often coming to rest on his other main interest, parapsychology, a subject which physicists, including Stephen, tended to regard with derision. For Bernard howev
er, coincidences and telepathic communication were significant. Indeed he was astounded to find that his impromptu visit from Geneva – where he was staying – to Les Houches, was actually expected by Stephen, his new supervisor, who had already summoned him in an undelivered word-of-mouth invitation through a third party. Bernard’s early ambition had been to become a spaceman. As a child, to his mother’s consternation, he had once spent a whole day preparing for this objective by standing on his head in the cupboard under the stairs while his younger brother sat outside the door acting as mission control. His mother must have been grateful that his intellect destined him for the theory rather than the practice of space exploration.
When at last the sun consented to shine in France as well as Switzerland, and the mountains appeared from behind the clouds, Kip and Linda offered to take Robert and me on a mountain walk, up towards one of the glaciers, the Glacier de Bionnassay on the west face of Mont Blanc. Leaving Lucy and Stephen with my parents, we took the cable car from Les Houches up to a ridge from where we could look down to the toy chalets and villages dotted about the valley. The summer school down to our left was just out of sight behind the dark trees, while to our right a steep path ascended the mountainside, following the track of the funicular railway which crawled laboriously up from Saint-Gervais to the top station at the Nid de l’Aigle, the Eagle’s Nest. The dazzling whiteness of the mountain against the deep blue sky was intoxicating, leading us on, up and up, pausing now and then to share Linda’s ecstatic delight at the wide range of alpine plants and flowers opening in the afternoon sun. We continued our climb, higher and higher, beyond the end of the railway line in the direction of the massive blue-grey expanse of the glacier, still searching for more specimens for Linda.
It was not until we reached the first of the climbers’ refuges in the lee of the Dôme du Goûter that, as one, we realized that we were alone on the mountain. Far below, the trains had ceased to run and all the other walkers had melted away although the sun was still high. Eagles wheeled silently overhead, a distant stream trickled down the rocks; otherwise there was little movement: an eerie quietness prevailed. None of us had thought of checking the time of the last cable car down to the village. At a brisk pace, almost a run, we set off back down the track to the cable-car station, more than an hour’s walk away. Against all expectation, there in the station was a cable car with an attendant standing beside it. We ran to him smiling with relief, but he turned a dour face towards us, barring our way. Implacably indifferent, he announced that the last cable car had gone at five-thirty and it was now nearly six o’clock. We pleaded with him breathlessly, pointing to our five-year-old, who was – for once – beginning to tire. The man was impervious, hard as flint. We turned away, anxious and angry. On the ridge above the station there was a hostel from where we tried to call the summer school, but there was no reply. We dared not wait any longer, as the sun was now lower in the sky, so we left money with the hostel keeper asking her to try to ring again and leave a message.
There was nothing for it but to head straight down the mountainside as fast as possible, taking the path when we could find it, scrambling through bracken and long grass when we could not. A patriarchal figure, like St Christopher in a medieval painting, Kip carried Robert, whose legs had borne him well for more than four hours, but were now aching with weariness. Fighting our way through the undergrowth, we watched in disbelief as the cable car, carrying the same disobliging attendant, sailed over our heads on its homeward run down to Les Houches. The air grew chill as the sun sank behind the mountains, and the sky darkened. We persevered, thankful at least that we were walking down the mountain not up it.
The village of Les Houches was by no means the end of the road. The summer-school enclave was another three quarters of an hour away, up the hillside further west. It must have been well after nine when we stumbled blindly into the brightly lit refectory where everyone was anxiously waiting for news of us. No message had come from the hostel and the worried group of family – my parents and Stephen – colleagues and students were fearing the worst. Tearful with tiredness and relief, we fell into each other’s arms.
At the end of August, as we dodged the showers at the last social function of the summer school – a barbecue where a whole lamb was being roasted over a pit – Kip suggested that Stephen might like to visit Moscow for talks with those many Russian scientists whose freedom to travel was severely restricted. He promised to make all the arrangements for a private visit which could be timed to follow on from the Copernicus Conference in Poland in the summer of 1973. Kip’s well-meaning suggestions made my blood run cold. While Lucy was a baby, Stephen had travelled abroad to conferences either with George Ellis or Gary Gibbons, his first research student, or with his mother. Now that Robert was five and Lucy one and a half, my period of respite from international travel seemed to be drawing to a close. Frequently Stephen would ask if I would go with him to conferences in far-flung places; just as frequently I would reply that I could not bear to leave the children.
Divided loyalties were beginning to tear me apart. Stephen was pursuing his career with an iron will, and conferences gave him the chance to assert his presence on the international scene. It had been my genuine aim to help him achieve all possible success, but since making that commitment, I had become the mother of his children, and to them I owed an equal responsibility. Although Stephen obviously required my help for many of his personal needs, the children needed my help for all of theirs. They were small enough still to need a constant presence. If their future was insecure on account of the health of their father, then I, their mother, had to compensate for that by not abandoning them more than necessary. Although they would be in excellent hands with their grandparents, I found the prospect of being thousands of miles apart from them for any length of time excruciating.
The scenario was set for a grim, recurring competition. Stephen would ask if I would like to go with him to a conference in, say, New York and tensely I would decline. Tacitly ignoring my reluctance, he would repeat the same question week after week until I was reduced to a frenzy, overwhelmed with guilt at letting him down, yet saddened by his lack of understanding. This pressure exacerbated the fear of flying which had pursued me since the tour of America in 1967, hovering over me like a great black bird at the mere mention of air travel. I had flown only twice since then, once on the winter holiday to Majorca when Robert fell sick, and the second time to Switzerland in May 1970. There had been a trip planned to Tbilisi in Georgia in September 1968, but to my silent relief, many British scientists, including Stephen, refused to attend in protest against the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia that August. My fear of air travel was not completely unjustified: in the late Sixties and Seventies, not only did aeroplanes fall out of the sky with chilling regularity, they were also the favourite targets for hijackings by the growing bands of international terrorists.
The sum total of all the conflicting pressures doomed me to years of misery and travel by the longest, most roundabout means. In 1971, when Stephen was invited to attend a conference in Trieste, he went by air while Robert and I took the train, leaving seven-month-old Lucy with my parents. After the long, hot journey across Europe, we stopped in Venice, where Robert, bewitched by the view from the top of the Campanile, refused to descend – until the sudden clang of the heavy bells at midday sent him running for the lift. He then insisted on sitting down at a table in St Mark’s Square outside Florian’s, which proved to be an expensive lesson – the equivalent of £6 for a tiny cup of coffee – so the next time we passed Florian’s by and sat down on the steps around the porticoed square – only to become targets for the local pigeons.
Two years later, the proposed trip to Moscow via Warsaw was a very different undertaking: travel by air was indispensable and applications for visas had to be sent months in advance. There was no choice; I would be away from the children for nearly a month, as in those repressive days after the fall of Khrushchev, nobody other than me
would be granted a visa to accompany Stephen. The prospect haunted me but the plans were laid, the tickets were booked – paid for, as always by some scientific organization or other – and, with some difficulty, the visas extracted from the Russian embassy. It was very dispiriting to think that in the space of a few short years, I had become a pale shadow of the student who had travelled alone round Spain, blithely disregarding all parental concerns, revelling in the spirit of adventure, and relishing air travel, even in clapped-out propeller aircraft. Bound for Warsaw and Moscow but wan with care, I slipped away from the children as they played happily in their grandparents’ house in St Albans in August 1973.
8
Intellect and Ignorance
Astronomers were flocking to Poland in 1973 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the birth of Nicolaus Copernicus, the Polish astronomer whose dissatisfaction with the complicated mathematics needed to account for the movement of the planets in the earth-centred universe of Ptolemy’s theory compelled him to develop a new theory of the universe in 1514. Still considering myself as something of a medievalist, but a medievalist with more than a passing interest in cosmology, I was fascinated by the iconoclastic effect of the Copernican theory, which postulated that the earth and other planets revolved around the sun, and thus superseded the Ptolemaic theory which had become tantamount to an article of faith, both scientific and religious, though in fact it bore little relation to the biblical concept of a flat earth, above which was heaven and below which was hell. On my first visit behind the Iron Curtain – apart from a day trip to Yugoslavia from Trieste in 1971 – I also found in Poland a lesson in the nature of tragedy: the tragedy of history in a country which bore the scars of oppression and division, the philosophical tragedy for mankind of the schism between science and religion which resulted from Copernicus’ theory, and the tragedy of genius.