Cambridge University made Stephen Hawking‘s 1966 thesis, Properties of Expanding Universes, openly accessible on Monday and as a result, the website has intermittently shit itself under the influx of physics nerds around the world.
The famous publication details theories on the origins of the universe and until being made freely available, cost users £65 for a digital copy. The university says more than 60,000 people have accessed or downloaded the paper already. Comparatively, they say other theses generally have “fewer than 100 views a month”.
Considered one of the most influential physicists of all time, Hawking hopes people won’t be “disappointed” with his early work. To be fair, who doesn’t look back on anything they did in uni and cringe?
He also hopes his thesis will “inspire” folks around the world, encouraging other academics to follow suit and allow free access to their own works. “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 across the spectrum of human understanding,” he said.
Cambridge made the 134-page thesis free as part of Open Access Week 2017. Hawking went on to write a heap of excellent books, including The Theory of Everything, The Universe in a Nutshell, and 1988’s bestseller, A Brief History of Time.
“By making my PhD thesis Open Access, I hope to inspire people around the world to look up at the stars and not down at their feet; to wonder about our place in the universe and to try and make sense of the cosmos,” he said yesterday.
If you’re keen for some light reading, you can suss Hawking’s thesis right here, assuming the site is handling the traffic.
