SS > NF reviews > Stephen W. Hawking

p4. While we expect that most of our readers will have some acquaintance with General Relativity, we have endeavoured to write this book so that it is self-contained apart from requiring knowledge of simple calculus, algebra, and point set topology.

p1. A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

[A fuller account of the origin of "turtles all the way down" can be found in Wikipedia (naturally)]

author : Stephen W. Hawking

Books

Books : reviews

Stephen W. Hawking, George F. R. Ellis. The Large Scale Structure of Space-time

Stephen W. Hawking. A Brief History of Time: from the Big Bang to black holes. Guild. 1988