"Man in his hunt for objective reality suddenly discovered that he always confronts himself alone"

Thomas Hertog is a cosmologist and professor of theoretical physics at KU Leuven, Belgium, where he works on the quantum nature of black holes and the state of our early universe. A long time collaborator of Stephen Hawking's, Hertog has been questioning the status of our physical laws moments after the big bang. In his influential book, On the Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking's Final Theory, he challenges the mainstream conception that the laws of physics are immutable and instead proposes a Darwinian picture, where laws evolved with the universe.

Having held fellowships at UC Santa Barbara and CERN, Hertog also leads Belgium’s participation in the European Space Agency’s flagship mission dedicated to the detection of gravitational waves. He is a world-renowned science communicator and has curated several exhibitions combining art and science.

"A fascinating insight into one of humankind’s deepest quests, by one of its deepest minds." — Dr Christophe Galfard, author of The Universe in Your Hand and former student of Stephen Hawking.