Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking was a British theoretical physicist and cosmologist whose A Brief History of Time made cutting-edge physics accessible to a global audience of millions.

Stephen Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge — a chair previously held by Isaac Newton — and one of the most important theoretical physicists of the twentieth century. His scientific contributions, particularly his work on black holes and cosmology (including the theoretical prediction of what is now called Hawking radiation), were made while he was living with motor neurone disease from the age of twenty-one. His survival and continued intellectual productivity for more than fifty years after diagnosis became part of his public persona, though he consistently expressed ambivalence about being cast primarily as an inspirational figure rather than a scientist.

A Brief History of Time (1988) became a publishing phenomenon on a scale almost without precedent for a science book: it remained on the Sunday Times bestseller list for over four years and has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide. The book covers the origin of the universe, the nature of time, black holes, the unification of physics, and the search for a theory of everything, all without a single equation (by his publisher’s insistence). It is genuinely ambitious in what it attempts to communicate, and Hawking’s instinct for arresting analogy and concrete illustration makes abstruse concepts as accessible as they can be made without sacrificing accuracy.

The honest caveat many readers encounter is that A Brief History of Time is famously purchased more often than it is finished: the material becomes genuinely difficult in the later chapters, and the famous accessibility of the early sections should not deceive readers into expecting an easy ride throughout. The Illustrated Brief History of Time and, later, The Universe in a Nutshell are more recent and more accessible companions. Hawking’s courage in the face of his illness and his willingness to engage the public with serious science leave a legacy well beyond any individual book.