Happy Birthday, Professor Hawking

Brain Pickings celebrates Stephen Hawking's 71st birthday today with a 1991 documentary (directed by Errol Morris, music by Philip Glass) about the famous physicist, who stated:

Ever since the dawn of civilization, people have not been content to see events as unconnected and inexplicable. They have craved an understanding of the underlying order in the world. Today we still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity’s deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in.

To see the film, go here or here. In the documentary, Hawking remarked (starting at 0:13:05) that cosmology of an expanding universe does not preclude the existence of a Creator (something he later disputed) but it does limit the timeframe in which the universe might have been created. Hawking's fascination with time as the key to the cosmos also prompted him to ask: why do we remember the past, but we don't remember the future?

From the cover of A Briefer History of Time (2005). Image Source: Skeptic.