Many universities this week are marking Open Access Week. The yearly event centers on improving the online availability of academic research to the public. Cambridge University in England celebrated by releasing the 1966 doctoral thesis of Stephen Hawking for free online. Hawking was a graduate student at Cambridge. Hawking is the world's best-known physicist. He completed his thesis, Properties of Expanding Universes, when he was just 24 years old. The work explores ideas about the origins of the universe -- ideas that Hawking has studied throughout his career. News of Hawking’s publicly available thesis spread quickly. Within hours, Cambridge’s website collapsed because of the high number of people trying to access the research paper.
What does origin mean?
big bang
point of creation
internet access
scholarly paper
What was his thesis called?
Access to Research
Physics for Beginners
Properties of Expanding Universes
Origins of the World
His work explores ideas about the universe.
how to publish research
the universe
space travel
the center of the earth