Stephen Hawking is one of the most remarkable figures of our time — a Cambridge genius who has earned international celebrity as a brilliant theoretical physicist and become an inspiration and revelation to those who have witnessed his courageous triumph over disability. This is Hawking’s life story by Kitty Ferguson, who has had special help from Hawking himself and his close associates and who has a gift for translating the language of theoretical physics for non-scientists. Twenty years ago, Kitty Ferguson’s «Stephen Hawking: Quest for a Theory of Everything» became a «Sunday Times» bestseller and took the world by storm. She now returns to the subject to transform that short book into a hugely expanded, carefully researched, up to the minute biography, giving a rich picture of Hawking’s childhood, the heartrending beginning of his struggle with Motor Neurone Disease when he was a first-year graduate student, his ever-increasing international fame, and his long personal battle for survival in pursuit of a scientific understanding of the universe. Throughout she also summarizes and explains to the layman the cutting-edge science in which Hawking has been engaged. Published with text illustrations and with photographs that cover Hawking’s life from his infancy to the present, «Stephen Hawking» is written with the clarity and simplicity for which all Kitty Ferguson’s books have been praised. The result is a captivating account of an extraordinary life and the work of a splendid mind.
