IT WAS a well-known fact 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 with Stephen Hawking. After receiving my results and coming out on top, I was invited to discuss with him.
I made my way to his office, which was located in the department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics. Being inside a creaking Victorian building on the banks of the river Cam, the office was just off the main common room. Despite the noise, Stephen preferred to keep his door slightly open. I knocked, paused, and slowly pushed it open.
As I entered, I didn’t know what to expect. I knew Stephen was renowned for his work on black holes and even faced criticism for his ideas about their explosions. However, on that particular day, he was contemplating a different question: why is the universe perfectly suited for the existence of life?
This question sparked a profound journey for both of us. Over the next two decades, until his passing, Stephen and I collaborated closely on groundbreaking ideas that propose a fundamentally new understanding of why the universe possesses its unique attributes. In our conception, the laws of physics themselves have undergone a sort of evolution to be…
