This was a television self-portrait (7 December) that showed the scientist’s uncomplicated pride in his own achievements and enjoyment of fame. His string of breakthroughs began in 1965 with a decisive intervention in favour of the newly minted Big Bang theory of the universe.The Big Bang was, we learned, unpopular with scientists who didn’t like the idea of a moment of Creation and hence a possible Creator. Hawking wondered if there was “a way the Big Bang could have happened on its own, without the need for a God to get it going”. He developed Roger Penrose’s idea that time stops when a black hole collapses on itself, applying it to the universe as a whole, in reverse. No time, hence no “before”, hence no Creation. “The universe”, he