Stephen Hawking's Students & Academic Lineage

Great scientists belong to academic families: chains of mentor and student stretching back through generations. Stephen Hawking sat in the middle of one such lineage, shaped by his own supervisor and shaping in turn a generation of physicists who carry his influence forward.

His own supervisor: Dennis Sciama

When Hawking arrived in Cambridge as a research student in 1962, he was supervised by Dennis Sciama, one of the most influential figures in modern British cosmology. Sciama was famous not so much for a single discovery as for the extraordinary group of students he mentored, of whom Hawking became the most celebrated. Sciama's own academic line traces back through the great physicist Paul Dirac and beyond, placing Hawking in a distinguished scientific heritage.

The students he supervised

As Lucasian Professor and a leading light of Cambridge's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Hawking supervised a long series of doctoral students over his career, many of whom became prominent physicists in their own right. Among the best known are:

• Bernard Carr, who studied primordial black holes with Hawking and became a professor of mathematics and astronomy, also known for his work on the anthropic principle.
• Don Page, a frequent collaborator who worked with Hawking on quantum cosmology and black hole radiation, and who became a leading theoretical physicist. See Don Page.
• Gary Gibbons, who became a distinguished Cambridge physicist, known for the Gibbons-Hawking work on cosmological horizons and gravitational thermodynamics.
• Raymond Laflamme, who began as a student of Hawking, worked on the arrow of time (and helped change Hawking's mind on it), and went on to become a leader in quantum computing.
• Malcolm Perry, a long-term collaborator who worked with Hawking on the information paradox into his final years.

Over his career Hawking supervised more than thirty doctoral students, a remarkable record for someone whose physical communication grew steadily more difficult.

Mentoring through adversity

There is something striking in this teaching legacy. As Hawking gradually lost the ability to write equations by hand and then to speak, he developed an extraordinary capacity to do complex physics in his head and to guide students through discussion. Former students often described how he would listen, pause, and deliver a precise comment that reframed a whole problem. His influence therefore lives on not only in his papers but in the careers of those he trained, an academic family that continues his work. To explore his collaborators in more depth, see the collaborators section.