“ Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth. “
Quotes by Stephen W. Hawking
Introducing Stephen W. Hawking
Stephen William Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, in Oxford, England, to Frank and Isobel Hawking. His birth coincided curiously with the 300th anniversary of Galileo Galilei’s death, a fact often noted given Hawking’s later work in cosmology. Raised in a family that valued education—his father was a medical researcher and his mother a politically active intellectual—Hawking grew up in St. Albans after the family relocated there in 1950. He was an inquisitive child, though not initially a standout student, earning the nickname “Einstein” among peers for his budding interest in science.
Hawking pursued physics at University College, Oxford, starting in 1959. He initially found the coursework unchallenging, reportedly spending only about 1,000 hours on his studies over three years—yet still graduated with a first-class honors degree in 1962. His real passion emerged during his graduate studies at Cambridge University, where he began exploring cosmology and gravitation under the supervision of Dennis Sciama. It was here, at age 21, that he received a life-altering diagnosis: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a motor neuron disease. Doctors gave him a prognosis of just two years to live, but Hawking defied this, continuing his work and life with remarkable resilience.
