Bernard Ryan - Stephen Hawking: Physicist and Educator

As a boy, Stephen lived and attended school in St. Albans.

Source: Campix.

By the time Stephen was 12, one of his friends later recalled, "I realized for the first time that he was in some way different and not just bright, not just clever, not just original, but exceptional." Another friend remembered that Stephen was always taking things apartclocks, radios, anything mechanical or electronicto see how they worked. This friend recalled that 14-year-old Stephen seldom spent much time on homework, yet "while I would be worrying away at a complicated mathematical solution to a problem, he just knew the answerhe didn't have to think about it."

Stephen and his classmates were taken on field trips to museums and factories. At one chemical plant, a scientist who had been conducting their tour took the teacher aside after Stephen had asked some questions. "Who have you got here?" asked the scientist. "They're asking me all sorts of bloody awkward questions I can't answer!"

Looking ahead toward college, Stephen decided to concentrate on mathematics and physics during his last two years in St. Albans School. (Unlike American high school students, many British students decide on a college major while in the 11th grade.) His father assured him the only future in math was in teaching. He thought his son should plan a career in medicine, which would require more chemistry courses than Stephen wanted to take. After many arguments, Stephen agreed to study some chemistry as well as math and physics in St. Albans, but not to make any commitment to medicine.

By the time he was 16, Stephen and his friends were rounding up parts from clocks and a telephone switchboard to build their own computer. Stephen's mind worked out the design, while his pals, whose hands were better coordinated than his, took care of assembling the machine. They named it the Logical Uniselector Computing Engine (LUCE) and provedas a local newspaper, the Herts Advertiser, reportedthat it could answer certain mathematical questions. (The LUCE would be a valuable museum item today if only a computer teacher at St. Albans School had not tossed into the trash a box marked LUCE. It contained what he thought was just a mess of old wires and transistors.)

Stephen wanted to follow in his father's college footsteps by going to University College, one of 35 colleges within Oxford University. To get in, he had to pass two days of entrance tests: two exams in physics, two in math, and one in world issues and current affairs. Each exam lasted two and a half hours. Then came two sets of interviews. The first was with four deans and tutors who mainly wanted to find out what kind of person the applicant was. The second was with a specialist who wanted to find out how much he knew about physics.

Within two weeks, Stephen was accepted for entrance at Oxford in October 1959. He did not know that he had received a 95 percent grade on both physics tests and only slightly lower marks on the other three exams. He did know, however, he was offered a scholarship.

At 17, Stephen Hawking was one of the youngest students at University College, Oxford University's oldest college, which dates from 1249. No friends from St. Albans went with him. Many other students at Oxford had performed military service before college and were several years older than he was, so Hawking's college social life was lonely; college work, as far as he was concerned, was a bore.