How theoretical physicist Thomas Hertog helped Stephen Hawking produce his final, most radical theory of everything
Thomas Hertog tells us how he collaborated with Stephen Hawking on his final theorem — a Darwinian revolution in physics that explains the origin of time
In 2002, Thomas Hertog, then a theoretical physics graduate student, stepped inside Stephen Hawking’s office at the University of Cambridge and saw his supervisor’s eyes filled with emotion.
Hawking’s news was also a confession. The famed physicist told his student that his book, “A Brief History of Time,” was wrong because it predicted a barren universe unsuitable for life, and he wanted Hertog to help him find a new theory.
Live Science sat down with Hertog, now a professor at KU Leuven in Belgium, to discuss his new book “On the Origin of Time” (Penguin Random House, 2024), his decades-long collaboration with Hawking, and the mind-bending Darwinian view of the universe’s origins that their work ultimately produced.
