Stephen Hawking
...activist. He had two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary and an adopted brother, Edward.[7] Though Hawking’s parents were living in North London, they moved to Oxford while Isobel was pregnant with Stephen, desiring a safer location for the birth of their first child (London was under attack at the time by the Luftwaffe).[8] According to one of Hawking's publications, a German Wehrmacht V-2 missile struck only a few streets away.[9]
After Hawking was born, the family moved back to London, where his father headed the division of parasitology at the National Institute for Medical Research.[7]
In 1950, Hawking and his family moved to St Albans in Hertfordshire where he attended St Albans High School for Girls from 1950 to 1953. (At that time, boys could attend the Girls school until the age of 10.[10]) From the age of 11, he attended St Albans School, where he was a good, but not an exceptional, student.[7] When asked later to name a teacher who had inspired him, Hawking named his Mathematics teacher, "Mr Tahta".[11] He maintains his connection with the school, giving his name to one of the four houses and to an extracurricular science lecture series. He has visited to deliver one of the lectures and has also granted a lengthy interview to pupils working on the school magazine, The Albanian.
Hawking was always interested in science.[7] He enrolled at University College, Oxford with the intent of studying mathematics although his father preferred he go into medicine. Since mathematics was not offered at University College, Hawking instead chose physics. His interests during this time were in thermodynamics, relativity, and quantum mechanics. His physics tutor, Robert Berman, later said in the New York Times Magazine:
It was only necessary for him to know that something could be done, and he could do it without looking to see how other people did...
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