A Brief History of Time, authored by the legendary theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, is considered to be the holy grail of populalizing scientific writing and ever since it was published for the first time in 1988, the book has been an ultimate guide to both scientific and non-scientific communities searching for answers to the most fundamental questions. Summary of the Book Unarguably one of the greatest minds living on the planet, Stephen Hawking takes the reader to a breath taking journey into the depths of cosmos from big bang to big crunch, from nature of forces to the corners of multiple dimensions, from quarks to the entangled theory of strings, through the wormholes, encircling event horizons, along the arrow of time and ultimately leaving him on the edge of the universe with his ideas on the grand unification of forces – the theory of everything. Hawking being a brilliant physicist draws a stunningly simple anatomy of intricate nature of the universe through an elegantly written language of physics and mathematics and thus making even a non-scientific person understanding some of the most important aspects of working nature of the cosmos. By stimulating the existential inquisitiveness of the reader, A Brief History of Time not only awakens his interests in physics, cosmology, and particle physics but inspires the natural philosopher and the historian in him. Following the legacy of an elite bunch of people such as Kepler, Copernicus, Einstein and Sagan who brought science of universe to the general public, Hawking successfully attempts in bringing topics of black holes and wormholes to the tables of cafeterias and public media. A Brief History of Time is timeless in its own nature and deserves to be read by anyone who has a curiosity to know the origin and fate of his or her own existence. About the Author Stephen Hawking is considered to be one of the greatest living minds existing. Born to an English family on the 300th death anniversary of Galileo, Stephen Hawking has his alma mater in the Oxford and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. After an extensive work in physics and cosmology, in his early age itself he was showing a great potential in becoming one of the leading scientists in the field. When he was 21 he was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, a progressive motor neuron disease which destroyed the ability of his muscles to move and respond. It deteriorated with time and resulting in losing almost complete capability to move his body, but his brain continued to marvel with his extraordinary theories and thoughts. In 1974 he stunned the scientific community with his thesis on black holes, now famously called as Hawking Radiation. In 1979 he was honored with the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, which has been the epitome of all the scientific achievements. Even though he had reached a state where he needed a computerized speech synthesizer to articulate his thoughts, he wrote the magnum opus of science, A Brief History of Time which has sold more than 10 million copies. He currently holds the position of Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge. Few of other books authored by him are The Universe in a Nutshell, The Grand Design, My Brief History, The Theory of Everything and The Nature of Space and Time.
