PA PROFILE
HOWDO YOU GET FROM RECORDING TRIBAL MUSIC IN AFRICA AND THE SOUTH PACIFIC TOWORKING FOR THE MOST FAMOUS PHYSICIST IN THEWORLD? IWONA TOKC-WILDE ASKS JUDITH CROASDELL, PA TO PROFESSOR STEPHEN HAWKING
PROFESSORSTEPHENHAWKING,CH, CBE, Fellow of theRoyal Society,EmeritusLucasianProfessor ofMathematics, Director of Research at theDepartment ofAppliedMathematics andTheoreticalPhysics andFounder of theCentre forTheoretical Cosmology... it’s perhaps fittingthat Judith, hisPAof eight years, can list a couple of honours after her own name, too.
PACIFIC ODYSSEY AFellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a Bachelor of Divinity, Judith studied theology in Fiji, where she lived with her two children fromhermarriage to awell-known composer and explorer, David Fanshawe, for 11 years. Before then, Judith accompanied her husband on his extensive travels in Africa in the early 1970s: “Iworkedwith him on all his major projects, col- lecting and recording indigenousmusic.” When it cameto finding a newproject at the end of the sev-
enties, Fanshawe’s approach was pretty unconventional. “He spun a globe and his finger landed on tiny little Viti Levu, the main island in the archipelago of Fiji,” she says. “That’s howwe ended up in the South Pacific,where there’s absolutely no light pollution so the Milky Way was clearly visible and where we were lucky to watch Halley’s Comet appear in 1986.” After hermarriage ended, Judith and the children remained
in Fiji. “I studiedandworked asanart consultant, helpingpioneer an art therapy program for peoplewith mental disabilities,” she says. “I also helped run art galleries and set up amusic centre.”
SEE ROME AND DIE In the end, Judith felt itwas time to return to England.“We set- tled in Cambridge in the early 1990s and after umpteen appli- cations I finally got a job as a secretary and then a PA to the director of a research division at the examinationboard,” she says. After Fiji, Judith found Cambridge a dull and cold place.Her
workwasn’t always fulfilling, either, so she took several science courses and lectures at the university. Then, in October 2004, shewas made redundant and aweek later replied to an adver- tisement for a PA to Professor Hawking. “Even after I discovered I had been short-listed, I didn’t think I’d be interviewed by the man himself,” she says. “Yet, theret
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