My Brief History
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  • Published: 12 September 2013
  • ISBN: 9781448169917
  • Imprint: Transworld Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 144

My Brief History

Formats & editions
Paperback
2 Apr 2018
EBook
12 Sep 2013
Audiobook
12 Sep 2013
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The extraordinary personal autobiography of the world's most famous scientist, written solely and exclusively by Stephen Hawking.

'His clarity, wit and determination are evident, his understand and good humour moving' New Scientist

My Brief History recounts Stephen Hawking’s improbable journey, from his post-war London boyhood to his years of international acclaim and celebrity. Lavishly illustrated with rarely seen photographs, this concise, witty and candid account introduces readers to a Hawking rarely glimpsed in previous books: the inquisitive schoolboy whose classmates nicknamed him ‘Einstein’; the jokester who once placed a bet with a colleague over the existence of a black hole; and the young husband and father struggling to gain a foothold in the world of academia.

Writing with characteristic humility and humour, Hawking opens up about the challenges that confronted him following his diagnosis of motor neurone disease aged twenty-one. Tracing his development as a thinker, he explains how the prospect of an early death urged him onwards through numerous intellectual breakthroughs, and talks about the genesis of his masterpiece A Brief History of Time – one of the iconic books of the twentieth century.

Clear-eyed, intimate and wise, My Brief History opens a window for the rest of us into Hawking’s personal cosmos.

'Read it for the personal nuggets . . . but above all, it's worth reading for its message of hope' Mail on Sunday
  • Published: 12 September 2013
  • ISBN: 9781448169917
  • Imprint: Transworld Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 144
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About the author

Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking was a brilliant theoretical physicist and is generally considered to have been one of the world's greatest thinkers. He held the position of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for thirty years and is the author of A Brief History of Time which was an international bestseller. His other books for the general reader include A Briefer History of Time, the essay collection Black Holes and Baby Universe, The Universe in a Nutshell, The Grand Design, and Black Holes: The BBC Reith Lectures.
He died on 14 March, 2018.

portrait photo of Stephen Hawking

Also by Stephen Hawking

Unlocking the Universe
George's Secret Key to the Universe
The Illustrated Brief History Of Time
A Brief History Of Time
George and the Big Bang
George and the Blue Moon
A Briefer History of Time
See all

Praise for My Brief History

Stephen Hawking [has] a brain of enviable vastness, seeing and understanding things that lie way beyond most of us... His modesty is engaging

Daily Mail

Hawking writes movingly... we hear his voice radiating directly from the black hole of his motor neuron disease, without the amplification and elaboration supplied by the co-authors with whom he wrote his last few books

Financial Times

A concise, gleaming portrait

Nature

Powerful... [his] brevity makes for a bold picture

Guardian

Read it for the personal nuggets... But above all, it's worth reading for its message of hope

Mail on Sunday

Charmingly modest... it's appropriate that this most extraordinary of men should remain enigmatic

The Times

Stephen Hawking has had to overcome extraordinary obstacles in his life... Where he is most admirable is in his attitude to his disability - on which he is stoicism personified

Andrew Holgate, Sunday Times

His clarity, wit and determination are evident, his understatement and good humour moving... We will never really know Hawking. But what we do know - that he achieved extraordinary success against extraordinary adversity - is quite enough.

New Scientist

The book coherently appeals to readers who want a snapshot into Hawking's inner life and readers eager to trace the evolution of his thinking.

Sunday Business Post (Dublin)