A Brief History of Time Page #4

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And when he was with

other undergraduates at the tutorial...

and they saw this happen,

they were absolutely horrified...

'cause they thought, he did

this work in probably half an hour...

If they could have done it in a year, they

wouldn't have thrown it in the wastepaper basket.

They would've put it

in a frame on their walls.

Because of my lack of work...

I had planned

to get through the final exam...

by doing problems

in theoretical physics...

and avoiding any questions

that required factual knowledge.

I didn't do very well.

I was on the borderline between

a first-and second-class degree...

and I had to be interviewed

to determine which I should get.

They asked me

about my future plans.

I replied,

if they gave me a first...

I would go to Cambridge.

If I only got a second...

I would stay in Oxford.

They gave me a first.

I drove Stephen

and his young brother...

out to Woburn Park...

and he climbed a tree.

He was testing himself out, I think.

I didn't realize.

He did manage to climb a tree...

and go along a branch of it

and get himself down.

I think he began to notice

that his hands...

were less useful

than they had been...

but he didn't tell us.

Univ has these square staircases...

which are round

but they're square.

It was just coming down

from one of the rooms.

Steve actually fell on the stairs

coming downstairs...

and kind of bounced

all the way down to the bottom.

I don't know if he lost consciousness,

but he lost his memory.

We took him to either my room

or someone's room.

The first question of course

was, "Who am I?"

We told him,

"You're Steve Hawking."

Right away he would ask again,

"Who am I?"

"Steve Hawking."

Then, after a couple of minutes,

he remembered he was Steve Hawking.

Then we'd say, "Do you remember

going down to the bar..."

and having a drink

on Sunday night?"

Or, "Do you remember coxing

on the river on Monday?"

And his memory

came back gradually...

until he could remember the previous

day's events, and then the previous hour...

and by the end of the two hours,

he could remember everything.

The question was,

"Well, maybe you've lost...

some of your mind

because of this."

And so Steve decided,

"Well, I'll take the Mensa test."

We said,

"Of course you'll get in."

But he came back delighted

he was able to get into Mensa.

Absolutely delighted.

I felt that there were two areas...

of theoretical physics...

I might study at Cambridge.

One was cosmology,

the study of the very large.

The other was

elementary particles...

the study of the very small.

However, I thought

elementary particles...

were less attractive...

because there was

no proper theory.

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