Stephen Hawking

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• Stephen Hawkings 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 it.
  ... He didnt have very many books, and he didnt
  take notes. Of course, his mind was completely
  different from all of his contemporaries.
• Hawkings unimpressive study habits gave him a
  final examination score on the borderline between
  first and second class honours, making an "oral
  examination" necessary.
• Berman said of the oral examination
• And of course the examiners then were
  intelligent enough to realize they were talking
  to someone far more clever than most of
  themselves.

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• Hawking describes himself as lucky" despite his
  disease. Its slow progression has allowed him
  time to make influential discoveries and it has
  not hindered him from having, in his own words,
  "a very attractive family". When Jane was asked
  why she decided to marry a man with a 3-year life
  expectancy, she responded Those were the days
  of atomic gloom and doom, so we all had a rather
  short life expectancy."

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• Jane Hawking, Hawkings first wife, with whom he
  had three children, cared for him until 1991 when
  the couple separated, reportedly due to the
  pressures of fame and his increasing disability.
• Hawking married his nurse, Elaine Mason (who
  was also the previous wife of David Mason,
  designer of the first version of Hawkings
  talking computer), in 1995. In October 2006,
  Hawking filed for divorce from his second wife.

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• University College (in full, the The Master and
  Fellows of the College of the Great Hall of the
  University of Oxford), is one of the constituent
  colleges of the University of Oxford. It is a
  contender for being the oldest of the colleges of
  the university, and is amongst the largest in
  terms of population.

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• A degree may be awarded with or without
  honours, with the class of an honours degree
  based on the average mark of the assessed work a
  candidate has completed. Below is a list of the
  possible classifications with common
  abbreviations.
• First-Class Honours (First or 1st)
• Upper Second-Class Honours (21)
• Lower Second-Class Honours (22)
• Third-Class Honours (Third or 3rd)
• Ordinary degree (Pass)
• Fail (no degree is awarded)
• Until the 1970s, Oxford awarded Fourth-class
  Honours degrees.

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• provided
•    conjunction on the condition or understanding
  that.

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• The Big Bang is the cosmological model of the
  universe that is best supported by all lines of
  scientific evidence and observation. As used by
  scientists, the term Big Bang generally refers to
  the idea that the universe has expanded from a
  primordial hot and dense initial condition at
  some finite time in the past, and continues to
  expand to this day.

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• A black hole is a theoretical region of space in
  which the gravitational field is so powerful that
  nothing, not even electromagnetic radiation (e.g.
  visible light), can escape its pull after having
  fallen past its event horizon. The term derives
  from the fact that the absorption of visible
  light renders the hole's interior invisible, and
  indistinguishable from the black space around it.

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• Despite its interior being invisible, a black
  hole may reveal its presence through an
  interaction with matter that lies in orbit
  outside its event horizon. For example, a black
  hole may be perceived by tracking the movement of
  a group of stars that orbit its center.
  Alternatively, one may observe gas (from a nearby
  star, for instance) that has been drawn into the
  black hole. The gas spirals inward, heating up to
  very high temperatures and emitting large amounts
  of radiation that can be detected from earthbound
  and earth-orbiting telescopes. Such observations
  have resulted in the general scientific consensus
  thatbarring a breakdown in our understanding of
  natureblack holes do exist in our universe.