Hawking fans crash website in rush to download his PhD
CAMBRIDGE University’s website crashed yesterday after 30,000 fans of physicist Stephen Hawking scrambled to download his PhD thesis.
Properties of Expanding Universes, which the genius wrote in 1966, when he was 24, has been made freely available for the first time.
Prof Hawking, 75, said: “Anyone, anywhere in the world should have free, unhindered access to not just my research but to the research of every great and enquiring mind. It’s wonderful to hear how many people have already shown an interest in downloading my thesis. Hopefully they won’t be disappointed now that they finally have access to it.” Until now, people had to pay £65 at the university library for a scanned copy of the PhD. Its abstract begins: “Some implications and consequences of the universe are examined.”