Today (11 January 2001) at 4.30pm a speech by Professor Stephen Hawking will be broadcast live on the BBC website. Professor Hawking will be speaking to an audience of distinguished academics from across the world who have gathered in Cambridge to celebrate his 60th birthday.

Stephen wanted to do mathematics at University College Oxford but mathematics was not available so he did physics instead. He was awarded a first class honours degree. Stephen then went on to Cambridge to do research in cosmology, there being no-one working in that area in Oxford at the time.

In his third year at Oxford, Stephen noticed that he seemed to be getting more clumsy and fell over once or twice for no apparent reason. Shortly after his 21st birthday, he went into hospital for tests.


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