The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe

Stephen Hawking

New Millennium Press, 2002 - Science - 176 pages

In physicist Stephen Hawking's brilliant opus, A Brief History of Time, he presented us with a bold new look at our universe, how it began, and how our old views of physics and tired theories about the creation of the universe were no longer relevant. In other words, Hawking gave us a new look at our world, our universe, and ourselves. Now, available for the first time in trade paperback, Hawking presents an even more comprehensive look at our universe, its creation, and how we see ourselves within it. Imagine sitting in a comfortable room listening to Hawking discuss his latest theories and place them in historical context with science's other great achievements--it would be like hearing Christopher Columbus deliver the news about the new world. Hawking presents a series of seven lectures in which he describes, more clearly than ever, the history of the universe as we know it. He begins with the history of ideas about the universe, from Aristotle's idea that the Earth is round to Hubble's discovery two millennium later that our universe is growing. Using this history as a launching pad, Hawking takes us on a fascinating journey through the telescopic lens of modern physics to gain a new glimpse of the universe--the nature of black holes, the space-time continuum, and new information about the origin of the universe. He uses this scientific basis to come up with a "unified theory of everything" that the author claims will be "the ultimate triumph of human reason."

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - themulhern - LibraryThing

This book is a transcription of several lectures Stephen Hawking gave sometime before 1996. He does not own the copyright to these lectures, and would prefer that people who are interested in his work ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - jimocracy - LibraryThing

This wasn't the book I had hoped for. It was interesting but did not explain string theory adequately. I'm not sure why the author spent so much time about black holes and so little time on Grand Unified Theory.

About the author

Stephen William Hawking was born in Oxford, England on January 8, 1942. He received a first class honors degree in natural science from Oxford University and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. He was a theoretical physicist and has held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University from 1982 until his death. In 1974, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, the world's oldest scientific organization. In 1963, he learned he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neuromuscular wasting disease also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The disease confined him to a wheelchair and reduced his bodily control to the flexing of a finger and voluntary eye movements, but left his mental faculties untouched. He became a leader in exploring gravity and the properties of black holes. He wrote numerous books including A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, Black Holes and Baby Universes, On the Shoulders of Giants, A Briefer History of Time, The Universe in a Nutshell, The Grand Design, and Brief Answers to the Big Questions. In 1982, he was named a commander of the British Empire. A film about his life, The Theory of Everything, was released in 2014 and was based on his first wife Jane Hawking's book Traveling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen. He died on March 14, 2018 at the age of 76.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe
• Author: Stephen Hawking
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: New Millennium Press, 2002
• ISBN: 1893224546, 9781893224544
• Length: 176 pages
• Subjects: Science / Physics / General