3. Introduction

Stephen Hawking was born on \(8\) January \(1942\) in England. He is a theoretical physicist, Cosmologist, and author. He taught Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and later became the director of theoretical cosmology. Hawking attended the St. Albans school in London. He had difficulty in reading when he was very young. But he was interested in other things such as the working of the Universe, its origin, aerodynamics, Mathematics, Physics etc. He built a computer out of clock parts, an old telephone switchboard and other recycled components with the help of his Maths teacher at a very young age.

 

 

Hawking enrolled into the University of Oxford for graduation. Although he was way ahead of his classmates, his excessive devotion to academics only resulted in him landing up in a difficult situation. He found it difficult to attend factual questions due to sleepless nights before the exams.  Hawking has estimated that he studied for nearly \(1000\) hours during the three years at the University. He later gained a first class in Physics and went on to take cosmology at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge. He worked his thesis on Robert Penrose's theory of the Big bang.

 

In \(1963\), he was diagnosed with an early onset slow progressing of motor neurone disease. The doctors predicted that he would live only up to two years. The disease slowly paralysed his body parts and he was confined to a wheelchair. He lost his speech and had to communicate with a speech generating machine. Although he was initially depressed about the disease, he went on to gather self-confidence through extensive reading and went on to live till the age of \(76\). He is known for his studies in general relativity, black hole radiation and Quantum physics. He has penned several books based on his studies, which are widely appreciated by physicists and people across the globe.

 

Famous books by Stephen Hawking: