Stephen William Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, in Oxford,
England. His father, a well-known researcher in tropical
medicine, urged his son to seek a career in medicine, but
Stephen found biology and medicine were not exact enough.
Therefore, he turned to the study of mathematics and physics.
Hawking was not an outstanding student at St. Alban's School,
nor later at Oxford University, which he entered in 1959. He was
a social young man who did little schoolwork because he was able
to grasp the essentials of a mathematics or physics problem
quickly. At home he reports, "I would take things apart to see
how they worked, but they didn't often go back together." His
early school years were marked by unhappiness at school, with
his peers and on the playing field. While at Oxford he became
increasingly interested in physics (study of matter and energy),
eventually graduating with a first class honors in physics
(1962). He immediately began postgraduate studies at Cambridge
University. The onset of Hawking's gr