From: mk_thisisit
Sir Roger Penrose frequently mentions his collaboration with Steven Hawking [00:00:44].
Division of Authorship and Ideas
When discussing their joint work, Penrose states that he was “mainly” the author [00:00:47], and “the key ideas were mine” [00:00:51]. He reiterates this, claiming that “almost all of these concepts belong more to Pen Rose than to Hawking” [01:29:52], and again that it was “mainly me who was the author” [01:31:13]. While Penrose credits himself for the key ideas, he acknowledges that Hawking “developed certain techniques more than I did” [01:38:48].
Hawking’s Role and Early Work
Penrose notes that Hawking was “better at drawing attention to his work” [01:30:01]. He also recalls that Steven Hawking’s early work “was full of errors” [01:31:22]. Many of these errors were corrected by Brandon Carter [01:31:27], but Hawking himself was capable of spotting and correcting them for his doctoral thesis [01:31:30]. Penrose served as one of the reviewers for Hawking’s doctoral thesis, pointing out various mistakes that Hawking had corrected by the time of his examination [01:31:38].
Terminology and Primary Contributions
Penrose mentions that when he later worked with Steven Hawking, Hawking “used different concepts than those I originally used” [04:36:06], and that he adopted Hawking’s terminology, even though it was not his own [04:44:27].
Hawking’s “most important work” concerned “the evaporation of black holes” [01:31:56]. Penrose indicates that he was not alone in this, suggesting that the initial ideas came from him, but many of the later technical issues were developed by Hawking himself [01:32:02]. This concept of “Hawking pairing” or evaporation is considered Hawking’s “enormous contribution to science” [01:5:25]. Hawking discovered that black holes, contrary to being completely cold, possess some temperature [01:5:31].