My short story

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Stephen Hawking at NASA (1980s)

My Brief History (English original title: My Brief History ) is an autobiography by the British physicist Stephen Hawking , published in 2013 by Bantam Books in the United States . In the same year, the German translation by Hainer Kober was published by Rowohlt Verlag in Germany. The book describes the private and scientific life of this popular scientist suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) from his own perspective.

content

In the book, the physicist Stephen Hawking, suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, describes his life and previous scientific work up to 2013 in the form of an autobiography. The book is divided into 13 content chapters, each covering a period or a topic with which he is concerned has busy. In the German paperback edition, the book has 150 pages and is illustrated by numerous private and institutional photos. In the first four chapters Hawking describes his "childhood" and his life in " St. Albans " as well as his studies in " Oxford " and the time in " Cambridge ". This is followed by three chapters on the scientific topics “ Big Bang ” and “ Gravitational Waves ” as well as “ Black Holes ”. The following chapter is headed “Caltech”, followed by a chapter entitled “Marriage”, which mainly deals with the separation from his first wife and the marriage with his second wife. In “A Brief History of Time” he recapitulates the genesis of his first very popular book of the same name and its success. This is followed by presentations of his thoughts and work on these topics under the headings “ Time Travel ” and “ Imaginary Time ”. The book ends with the chapter "No Limits", which shows in a few pages what Hawkins was able to achieve in his life despite his illness.

The book is shaped by very personal thoughts, which begin with childhood memories from the time of the bombing war in London and later extend through the relationship with his parents and the time at university to the last years of research and his great popularity. It describes his early studies in Oxford , which he began at the age of 17 and where he was active as a helmsman in the Boat Club, as well as his trip to Iran, which he undertook as a student and where he was caught in a severe earthquake. His move to Cambridge, where he started his doctoral studies in cosmology with Dennis W. Sciama , was particularly important for his professional development . At the beginning of his doctoral thesis, however, he also learned that he was suffering from an incurable disease, which was later confirmed as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and that he would probably only live a few more years. Around the same time he met and loved Jane Wilde , whom he married in 1965 and with whom he had three children. The two separated in 1990 when the ALS at Hawking was already very advanced, and Hawking moved in with Elaine Mason, his nurse and, after 1995, second wife.

Hawking on a parabolic flight , 2007; a similar picture is illustrated in the final chapter “No Limits”.

When presenting his work, as in his popular science books, he attaches great importance to comprehensibility and he combines the scientific presentation with anecdotes and notes from his life, for example when he reports on bets with Kip Thorne and John Preskill about black holes and singularities. He also presents the problem of getting into problems with governments or being viewed as a weirdo when researching questions about time and the potential possibility of time travel.

The last chapter of the book, in which Hawking summarizes and reflects on his life, represents an important section and thus the essence of the presentation:

“When I was twenty-one and got ALS, I thought it was extremely unfair. Why me? At that time I thought my life was over. I would never reach the potential that I thought I had. But today, fifty years later, I can look back on my life calmly and be satisfied. "

Chapter overview

The book is divided into the following chapters:

  1. childhood
  2. St. Albans
  3. Oxford
  4. Cambridge
  5. Gravitational waves
  6. Big Bang
  7. Black holes
  8. Caltech
  9. marriage
  10. A brief history of time
  11. Time travel
  12. Imaginary time
  13. No limits

reception

My short story was published in 2013 entitled My Brief History , which is a direct reference to the title of his hit book A Brief History of Time . The book was translated into several languages ​​in the same year, in Germany it was published as the German translation by Hainer Kober by Rowohlt Verlag and was published there as a paperback in January 2015. The hardcover edition came directly after its release into the bestseller list of the mirror in the category hardcover / nonfiction and rose on 23 September 2013, Rank 11, where he remained for several weeks. It remained in the top 40 until January 2014. The paperback rose to 42nd place in the paperback / non-fiction category in January 2015 and stayed at 38th place until February.

My short story has been discussed and presented in several reviews. Stefan Gillessen from Spektrum der Wissenschaft describes the book as a “brief outline of an eventful life” and his assessment is sober. He attests to Hawking “a predominantly sober style” that sometimes lapses into “a somewhat strained humor” because he thinks readers would expect it from him, and he criticizes the comparison “the joy that a scientist feels at work, is comparable to that of a prostitute ”as completely inappropriate filth. At the same time he attests that "Hawking (...) cannot be accused of arrogance". He also criticizes the fact that personal passages unfortunately “sometimes [mix] with physical content, which is at the expense of the stringency and legibility of the book. Especially the two chapters on time travel and imaginary time seem out of the ordinary, especially since they are quite incomprehensible. "

expenditure

Only the editions in German-speaking countries and the original edition are shown here:

Individual evidence

  1. My short story in the catalog of the German National Library - cf. Table of contents (PDF; 126 kB)
  2. My short story (hardcover) at Buchreport .
  3. My short story (paperback) at Buchreport .
  4. Stefan Gillessen: Brief outline of an eventful life. Review on Spektrum.de, November 7, 2013.