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Hawking grew up outside London in an intellectual family. His father was a physician and specialist in tropical diseases; his mother was active in the Liberal Party. He was an awkward schoolboy, but knew from early on that he wanted to study science. He became increasingly skilled in mathematics and in 1958 he and some friends built a primitive computer that actually worked. In 1959 he won a scholarship to Oxford University, where his intellectual capabilities became more noticeable. In 1962 he got his degree with honors and went to Cambridge University to pursue a PhD in cosmology. There he became intrigued with black holes (first proposed by J. Robert Oppenheimer) and "space-time singularities," or events in which the laws of physics seem to break down. After receiving his PhD, he stayed at Cambridge, becoming known even in his 20s for his pioneering ideas and use of Einstein's formulas, as well as his questioning of older, established physicists.
In 1968 he joined the staff of the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge and began to apply the laws of thermodynamics to black holes by means of very complicated mathematics. He published the very technical book, Large Scale Structure of Space-Time but soon afterwards made a startling discovery. It had always been thought that nothing could escape a black hole; Hawking suggested that under certain conditions, a black hole could emit subatomic particles. That is now know as Hawking Radiation. He continued working on the theory of the origin of the universe, and in doing so found ways to link relativity (gravity) with quantum mechanics (the inner workings of atoms). This contributed enormously to what physicists call Grand Unified Theory, a way of explaining, in one equation, all physical matter in the universe.
霍金English資料 (Stephen William Hawking)