霍金是继爱因斯坦之后最杰出的物理学家。他于1942年出生于英国牛津，先后就读于牛津大学和剑桥大学，学习数学、物理学和宇宙学。1963年霍金经诊断得了肌萎缩性侧索硬化症，医生说他最多只能活两年。在经历了一段短暂的失望和沮丧后，霍金又开始了他的宇宙学研究。他后来在相对论、“大爆炸”和黑洞等领域取得了突出的研究成果。霍金1988年出版的宇宙学著作《时间简史：从大爆炸到黑洞》，是一部里程碑式的畅销书。霍金被确诊患病已达40多年，但他仍孜孜于宇宙起源的理论研究，仍在为大统一理论而耕耘不已。霍金现任剑桥大学卢卡斯数学教授，这也是牛顿曾担任过的职位。而且本书为英文版，让你在英语水平在阅读中得到大幅度提升。

Few scientists are as recognizable as Stephen Hawking．Despite having Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis(Lou Gehrig's disease)—an affliction that many experts expected to have killed him decades ago—Hawking remains a vital and influential voice in the scientifiC community．One of the leading cosmolog ists studying the celestial phenomenon known as black holes，Hawking has also led the way in popularizing science with his best-selling Work A Brief History of Time．This biography of Hawking，written by a physicist，provides an accessible introduction to the life and work of aninspirational figure．

Series Foreword

Introduction

Timeline

Chapter 1 Destiny's Child：An Auspicious Birth and Eclectic Upbringing

Chapter 2 Scientist in Training：The Oxford Years

Chapter 3 Tragedy and Triumph：Deadly Disease and Dissertation

Chapter 4 Children and Calculations：Family Man and Teoretician

Chapter 5 “Stephen's Changed Everything”：Black Holes Aren’t Black

Chapter 6 Caltech and Cambridge：Exploring New Horizons

Chapter 7 Physics or Metaphysics?：The“No—Boundary”Proposal

Chapter 8 Challenges and Controversy：An Unexpected Silence and Time's Arrows

Chapter 9 The Best-Selling Book That‘'No One Read”：A Brief History of Time

Chapter 10 To Boldly Go：Time Travel and Television

Chapter 11 Plays，P—branes，and Polls：Private Lives and Public Pronouncements

Chapter 12 Books and Bets：The Universe in a Nutshell and the End of a Paradox

Epilogue StephenHawking：ManVersusMyth

Appendixes：

 A：General Relativity and Cosmology

 B：The Laws of Thermodynamics and Black Holes

 C：Inflationary Cosmology

 D：The AdS/CFT Correspondence

Glossary

Select Bibliography

Index

Vocabulary