Born in 1942, Stephen Hawking is no ordinary scientist. With a career that began over thirty years ago at Cambridge University, he has managed to do more than perhaps any other physicist to broaden our basic understanding of the universe. This skilful portrait of an indefatigable genius traces the course of Hawking's life and science, marrying biography and physics to tell the story of a remarkable man. As the New Stateman said of the first edition in 1992: 'A gripping account of a physicist whose speculations could prove as revolutionary as those of Albert Einstein.Its combination of erudition, warmth, robustness, and wit is entirely appropriate to their subject.'