An accessible and fascinating biography of the worlds most famous living physicist. Combines charming and tragic anecdotes of his life with lucid and coherent explanations of his work, second perhaps only to his own descriptions.

Here's to Hawking's 70th birthday, and beyond. ( )

"This is the story of one of the most remarkable figures of our time -- Professor Stephen Hawking, the cambridge genius who has earned an international reputation as the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Einstein.
When Kitty Ferguson approached Stephen Hawking with the idea of writing a book about him and asked him to help her make certain she understood his theories, he agreed to do so and also supplied her with material about his childhood and life. This is the splendid result.
It is not a biography per se. It is rather the story of one man's quest to find the ""Theory of Everything"". In these pages you will encounter a multitude of amazing paradoxes. Beginnings may be endings... Two great scientific theories taken together seem to give us nonsense... Empty space isn't empty... Black holes aren't black... Cruel circumstances can lead to happiness, although fame and success may not... and a man whose appearance inspires shock and pity takes us laughing to where the boundaries of space and time ought to be -- but are not."