The Life of Scientific Visionary Stephen Hawking

In 1959, at age 17, Hawking enters University College, Oxford, to study physics. Because the college does not offer mathematics as a degree, he chooses physics instead. He finds the academic work manageable and sometimes even unstimulating during his early undergraduate years.

Socially, he joins the university boat club as a coxswain, becoming well known among classmates. By his final year, he applies himself more seriously to his studies. He graduates in 1962 with first-class honors, securing a place at Cambridge to pursue graduate work in cosmology.