ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I decided to try and write a popular book about space and time after I gave the Loeb lectures at Harvard in 1982. There were already a considerable number of books about the early universe and black holes, ranging from the very good, such as Steven ‘Weinberg's book, The First Three Minutes, to the very bad, which will not identify. However, I felt that none of them really addressed the questions that had led me to do research in cosmology and quantum theory: Where did the universe come from? How and why did it begin? Will it come to an end, and if so, how? These are questions that are of interest to us all. But modern science has become so technical that only a very small number of specialists are able to master the mathematics used to describe them. Yet the basic ideas about the origin and fate of the universe can be stated ‘without mathematics in a form that people without a scientific ‘education can understand. This is what I have attempted to do in this book. The reader must judge whether I have succeeded. Someone told me that each equation I included in the book ‘would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations at all, In the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein's