Steven Hawking

Stephen William Hawking was born on January 8, 1942 to Frank Hawking, a research biologist, and Isobel Hawking. He had two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary, and an adopted brother, Edward. Though Hawking's parents had their home in North London, they moved to Oxford while Isobel was pregnant with Stephen since London was under attack at the time by the Luftwaffe. After Hawking was born, the family moved back to London, where his father headed the division of parasitology at the National Institute for Medical Research (White 4).

In 1950, Hawking and his family moved to St. Albans in Hertfordshire where from the age of 11 he attended St Albans School where he was a good, but lazy student (White 12). When later asked to name a teacher who had inspired him, Hawking named his Mathematics teacher, "Mr. Tahta". Over the years he has kept his connection with the school, giving his name to one of the four houses and to an extra-curricular science lecture series. He has visited to give one of the lectures and has also given a lengthy interview to pupils working on the school magazine, the Albanian (White 117).

He was always interested in science. He enrolled at University College, Oxford and planned on studying mathematics, against his father's wishes of him going into medicine. Since mathematics was not offered at University College, Hawking chose physics instead. His interests during this time were in thermodynamics, relativity, and quantum mechanics (White 31). His physics tutor, Robert Berman, later said in the New York Times Magazine, "It was only necessary for him to know that something could be done, and he could do it without looking to see how other people did it. ... He didn't have very many books, and he didn't take notes. Of course, his mind was completely different from all of his contemporaries" (White 149). He was passing with his fellow students, but his poor study habits gave him a final examination score on the borderline between first and second class honors, making an "oral examination" necessary. Berman said of the oral examination, "And of course the examiners then were intelligent enough to realize they were talking to someone far more clever than most of themselves" (White 155).

After receiving his B.A. degree at Oxford University in 1962, he stayed to study astronomy. He decided to leave when he found that studying sunspots, which was all the observatory could do, did not appeal to him and that he was more interested in theory than in observation.