This type of movie must be factually correct above everything else. Instead it is a hodgepodge of 50% theatrics, 49% personal life drama and 1% science and even that of questionable accuracy.
For example, it seems to imply that the theory of singularity was developed by Hawking and it was immediately hailed by the scientific world which is totally at odds with the account given by Hawking himself in his own book.
The theory of stellar collapse was developed by Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar on board a ship on his way to England for higher studies at Cambridge. It was based on his flash of insight that while Pauli Exclusion Principle is limited by Relativity, Gravity is not and therefore when a star above a certain mass (later named Chandrasekhar Limit) begins to collapse, it completely disappears into a mathematical abstraction called singularity. This shockingly alien concept was hotly contested by the scientific orthodoxy and ferociously attacked by his supervisor Sir Arthur Eddington and opposed by Einstein himself even though the mathematics was irrefutable ("A Brief History of Time", P. 83-85).
In fact, Eddington's hostility was so vicious that Chandrasekhar had to switch his field of study although it later formed the foundation of the theory of Black Holes which was built upon by others like Oppenheimer. Arthur I. Miller's "Empire of the Stars" gives a detailed account of Chandrasekhar's scientific career and his rivalry with Eddington.
Hawking is unquestionably one of the most brilliant minds of our time but to credit him with the achievement of another brilliant mind and to totally distort history does grave injustice to both of them and misguides the viewers.
For example, it seems to imply that the theory of singularity was developed by Hawking and it was immediately hailed by the scientific world which is totally at odds with the account given by Hawking himself in his own book.
The theory of stellar collapse was developed by Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar on board a ship on his way to England for higher studies at Cambridge. It was based on his flash of insight that while Pauli Exclusion Principle is limited by Relativity, Gravity is not and therefore when a star above a certain mass (later named Chandrasekhar Limit) begins to collapse, it completely disappears into a mathematical abstraction called singularity. This shockingly alien concept was hotly contested by the scientific orthodoxy and ferociously attacked by his supervisor Sir Arthur Eddington and opposed by Einstein himself even though the mathematics was irrefutable ("A Brief History of Time", P. 83-85).
In fact, Eddington's hostility was so vicious that Chandrasekhar had to switch his field of study although it later formed the foundation of the theory of Black Holes which was built upon by others like Oppenheimer. Arthur I. Miller's "Empire of the Stars" gives a detailed account of Chandrasekhar's scientific career and his rivalry with Eddington.
Hawking is unquestionably one of the most brilliant minds of our time but to credit him with the achievement of another brilliant mind and to totally distort history does grave injustice to both of them and misguides the viewers.