Make Prediction
Answers will vary.
END
DAY 2
Stephen Hawking: A Legendary Scientist and Man 159
The Hawking family was a bit eccentric. Their car was
an old London taxi. At dinner, it wasn’t unusual for the
family to eat in silence, while each read a favorite book.
Early on, Stephen was interested in science and math. He
asked constant questions about how things worked. When
he was sixteen, he and his friends built a simple computer
using parts from radios, clocks, and a telephone. However,
he was bored in school and got just average grades.
Despite his low grades, Hawking scored so well on
Oxford University’s entrance exam that he was offered a
scholarship to study physics at age 17. He was finally
studying something he loved, and he excelled at it. In his
off hours, he joined the rowing team, danced with his
friends, and fell in love with the woman he would marry
some years later. Hawking graduated with honors in 1962
at just twenty years of age. In post-graduate study at
Cambridge, he pursued his favorite scientific field:
cosmology.
Cosmology is the study of the universe. Hawking studied
stars and planets and everything in outer space. His
discoveries have changed our understanding of the
universe and the nature of time. Hawking has written about
black holes and how he thinks the universe began. He was
able to explain these complicated ideas so that
nonscientific people could understand them, and his books
have become world-famous.