Thomas Hertog (left) collaborated with Stephen Hawking for many years
Courtesy of Thomas Hertog
It was widely known among students at the University of Cambridge that the student with the highest marks in the final part of the mathematical tripos exams would have the opportunity to meet Stephen Hawking. As it happened, I was the top student and received an invitation to discuss with him.
I made my way to his office, located deep within the department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics. The office was situated in a Victorian building by the river Cam. Despite the noise in the main common room, Stephen preferred to keep his door slightly open. I knocked, paused, and slowly pushed it open.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect on the other side of that door. I knew Stephen was renowned for his work on black holes, and that he had faced criticism for his ideas on what happens when they explode. However, it turned out that he was contemplating a different question: why is the universe perfectly suited for the emergence of life?
This question became the basis of a long and collaborative journey for both Stephen and me. Over the next two decades, until his passing, we worked together on groundbreaking ideas that propose a revolutionary understanding of why the universe exists as it does. In our interpretation, the fundamental laws of physics have, in a way, evolved to…
