Dominick Chilcott

Honouring Stephen Hawking

I well remember the buzz that Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” created when it appeared in 1988 and the tremors of excitement I felt when I picked up the book for the first time. I had studied philosophy and theology at university in order better to understand ‘life, the universe and everything’ (in Douglas Adams’ memorable phrase). Here were the pages that would explain the secrets of the universe, if I could only follow the reasoning.

This week, on 12 August, President Obama awarded Professor Stephen Hawking the highest US civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, at a ceremony in the White House. Professor Hawking was accompanied by his three children, his carers and a few lucky friends.

The key part of the White House citation ran as follows:

“Persistent in his pursuit of knowledge, Stephen Hawking has unlocked new pathways of discovery and inspired people around the world. He has dedicated his life to exploring the fundamental laws that govern the universe, and he has contributed to some of the greatest scientific discoveries of our time. His work has stirred the imagination of experts and lay persons alike. Living with a disability and possessing an uncommon ease of spirit, Stephen Hawking's attitude and achievements inspire hope, intellectual curiosity, and respect for the tremendous power of science.”

This very distinguished honour, given by the American president to a British scientist, serves as a metaphor for transatlantic cooperation on science. To be world class, British science has to collaborate with the best scientists in other countries. The United States is Britain’s most important international scientific partner. And Britain makes a significant contribution to the advancement of science in the US too.

The UK Astronomy Technology Centre leads a consortium developing instruments for the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble’s extraordinary replacement. The University of Cambridge is part of an international team tracking the origins of swine flu to enable better remedies to be found.

US science is second to none – in funding, quality and sheer volume of activity. About a third of all scientific papers are published in the US. That’s why British scientists value so highly their collaboration with American counterparts.

But British scientists also enjoy an impressive reputation.

• With just 1 percent of the world’s population the UK receives over 12% of all citations to published papers and almost 13% of high-impact citations.

• UK scientists receive approximately 10 percent of internationally recognized science prizes annually.

• According to the Times Higher Education World University rankings, 4 of the world’s top 10 universities in research and teaching quality are in the UK. - The UK is the top European recipient of R&D investment.

So this UK-US scientific relationship brings benefits to both sides of the Atlantic.

Perhaps the two best known British theoretical scientists of all time are Sir Isaac Newton and Professor Stephen Hawking. Both of them redefined the way we understand the fundamental laws of physics. Stephen Hawking is the present day holder of the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge University, a position held by Sir Isaac Newton in his day.

Stephen Hawking, though, seems to have stolen a march on Newton in two respects. First, Newton never received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, for the very good reason that neither the office nor the medal existed in the 17th century. Second, Newton’s “Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica”, published in 1687, though one of the most influential books in the history of science, was not a popular hit with the masses.

Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time”, on the other hand, with its more accessible English language title, stayed on the Sunday Times best-seller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks. Now would be a good time to take it down from the shelves, blow the dust of the jacket and see if my hands still tremble with excitement as I turn the pages.

Posted at 14:53 13 August 2009 by Dominick Chilcott  |  Comments[0]

My inauguration day

Although millions of people around the world and on the National Mall watched President Obama's inauguration, it was also an intensely individual and personal experience. Everyone who was there will have some kind of story to tell of the day they saw history being made. Here's mine.
 
I left my house in north west DC to walk to the National Mall at 08h30. That was a bit casual. Most of my friends and colleagues were already there by then. In my pocket was a ticket for the blue zone, a gift from a generous Congressman. 
 
The city had changed character for the better that morning; very unusually, there were lots of pedestrians and almost no cars. Everyone was walking in the same direction with the same purposeful stride. It was freezing cold. Underneath thick cord trousers, I wore long-johns and under my top coat I had on a blazer, short-sleeved jumper, thick cotton shirt and a thick cotton T-shirt. A wooly hat, gloves and a shnoo (is that the right word for a circular scarf?) completed the inauguration look. Despite all those layers, I was still grateful to pass a waiter, outside a Starbucks, handing out free cups of something red and hot (which was very welcome but sadly not mulled wine).

Soon the tributaries of people converged into streams and then rivers of well wrapped folk of all colours and varieties. At one point,  I became surrounded by tall men, sporting fezzes and jackets with the baffling slogan 'Moorish Gatekeepers for Obama'.  The crowd was already pretty big and making one's way through so many people was tricky. But it was all very good humoured. Eventually, I got to the right place and found a very long queue for blue ticket holders wrapped around a massive, concrete office building. I joined the back of the queue and waited. It was about 10h10.

As one does, I began chatting to the couple next to me in the queue. She was a state senator from Arizona and he was a public official. Lifelong Democrats, they were making the 4,000 mile round trip to celebrate an historic day. And there were plenty more, like them, who had travelled immense distances. Which made it all the more disappointing that the blue zone queue was moving so slowly. The official music programme began at 10h30. We could just about hear the military band from where we stood, bent almost double against the biting wind, conscious of the minutes ticking past. The delay appeared to be caused by the time taken to screen people at the security checkpoint. With about 20 minutes to go before the inauguration proper, people began to lose patience and queue discipline evaporated. I managed to get into the wide end of a V shaped wedge of people, moving forward towards the blue zone gate at a glacier-like speed.

The press of people meant it was difficult to go backwards and impossible to go forwards through the crowd. There were thousands of us blue ticket holders, many of whom had travelled huge distances to witness the inauguration, and where we? Stuck in a mass of people, tantalisingly close to the National Mall but out of sight of it and the action. The crowd began to chant 'Let us in' but without much expectation that anyone would. Some wag, echoing Reagan's appeal to Gorbachev, called out 'Mr President, tear down this gate'. By now the inauguration had started. We knew this because someone behind me had a portable radio. Was that Aretha Franklin singing 'My country 'tis of thee'?

Just after 12 noon, we heard the sound of gun fire and cheering. That meant President Obama had sworn the oath. This apparently prompted the police to decide that enough was enough and close the gate into the blue zone. That wasn't a good moment. A small African-American boy, pushing his mother in a wheel-chair, had tears of frustration rolling down his cheeks. There were plenty of fed up faces, though no real anger. The discipline and stoicism of the crowd was remarkable.

Then we had a stroke of luck. The police removed one of the barriers that had been hemming us in and we spilled out to one side, in the direction of the National Mall. And when we came to the road in front of the park, we saw signs of a people's revolution. The security checkpoints had been abandoned. The waist high fences had been tramped underfoot. It was possible to walk anywhere and everywhere. So I made my way into the crowd as Obama began his speech. I had a clear, if somewhat distant, view of the Capitol building and could just about make out where Obama must have been standing. The sun was out. The capitol looked resplendent, draped in huge flags. And the mostly silent huge crowd stood still, listening to their new president's words.

It was a rather strange Narnia wardrobe-like experience, going suddenly from a confined, shaded press of frustrated folk, seeing nothing and hearing little, to this wide, sunlit expanse of enrapt people, focussed on one man, some distance off, but clearly audible through the array of speakers, telling us that we had to put away childish things and become more responsible. It felt almost as if one were dreaming. 
 
President Obama's speech was definitely the best attended inauguration speech in America's history. And actually, it was quite hard to concentrate on the words of the speech when the significance of the occasion was so massive. Afterwards, I found it quite hard to remember what the president had actually said. I needed to read the text.

If getting down to the National Mall was difficult, it was far worse making one's way back. But despite the hopelessly inadequate checkpoints, the abject failure of the authorities to manage the movement of so many people, despite the long and pointless queues, the bitter cold, the interminable waiting and all the associated frustrations, it was worth it.

It was worth being there to see Barack Obama become president. He showed Americans how far they have come from the days of slavery (begun during the colonial period), the civil war and the civil rights movement.  His election constituted unaswerable proof that Lincoln's vision of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people had not indeed perished from the earth but was more real than ever before.
 
One of the phenomenal aspects about President Obama is that the whole world, not just Americans, feels we own a bit of him.  He is someone with grandparents who still live in a Kenyan village, with an Indonesian-American half-sister married to a Chinese-Canadian and with Christians and Muslims in his immediate family. His very being seems to symbolise the diversity of mankind in a globalised age. He really does make us dare to hope for a better world.

Later that evening, my wife and I had dinner with American friends in DC. Among the guests were two New Zealanders who had also had tickets for the blue zone. They had got to the queue for the gate at about 08h00 but had nonetheless failed to make it past the security checkpoint and onto the National Mall in time. They must have been in the same press of people as me. But like the rest of us that evening, as they told their inauguration tale, they were smiling broadly.

Posted at 15:34 23 January 2009 by Dominick Chilcott  |  Comments[0]

Election night in Washington

Where were you at 11pm Eastern time when the networks announced that Senator Barack Obama would be the next president of the United States? Will you always remember the circumstances of the moment when America choose its first African-American head of state? I shall.
 
I was watching the BBC covering the election, at their headquarters in downtown Washington DC. The main newsroom was a hive of activity - banks of journalists, producers and directors hovering about flat screens, communications devices and computers, sucking up the nectar of the early results from the states. It looked a fantastically complex operation, with the BBC broadcasting simultaneously on, at least, two TV and three radio stations. Amazingly, everyone seemed to know what they were doing and, despite the appearance of chaos, all this activity had to be following a disciplined and meticulously planned system.
 
And then, after Ohio (the rock on which Kerry's ship had foundered in 2004), as the world collectively did the maths of the electoral map and concluded that Senator McCain could not possibly win without a stunning upset in the Western seaboard states, the realisation grew that Senator Obama had really done it. At eleven o'clock, the polls closed in California, Oregon and Washington state and the networks called his victory. It was an emotional moment. Hard bitten journalists around me stopped for a few seconds to savour it. There were tears of joy, punches in the air and hugs. 
 
McCain's graceful concession speech struck an affirmative tone that commentators suggested his campaign had missed. Americans I spoke to seemed to be relieved to be reconnecting with the John McCain they knew and admired. It was followed by Obama's wonderfully lyrical and moving acceptance speech, renewing the promise of America to the vast crowd gathered in the middle of the night in Chicago to hear him. "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer," he said. I have been replaying that speech on my i-pod ever since.
 
Just as gracious and almost as moving were President Bush's and Secretary of State Rice's statements the next day. The election was rightly being interpreted as a victory for the whole country, even by the defeated party. As Rice said, "One of the great things about representing this country is that it continues to surprise. It continues to renew itself. It continues to beat all odds and expectations." 
 
Senator Obama wasn't elected, of course, because he was African-American. But the fact that the colour of his skin and his unusual name didn't put the American people off shows how far this country has travelled since the civil rights activists challenged segregation and racially-based laws in the 1960s. The original sin of slavery, inherited from the colonial era, feels more and more like ancient history. Obama's election has proved that, in America, it's your qualities as a leader and a human being, not your ethnicity, that determine whether you can get to the top. I wonder when we'll be able to say the same about Europe.
 
There are, of course, huge challenges ahead for President-elect Obama. But the contemplation of these difficult times must not be allowed to tarnish the glory of the wonderful thing the American people have done in this election, once again becoming a shining example to the rest of the world. What a night to remember.

Posted at 09:40 07 November 2008 by Dominick Chilcott  |  Comments[5]