Terms of Use

These Terms of Use govern your use of the website at stephenhawking.co.uk (the "site"). By using the site you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the site. The site is free to use and is provided for general educational and informational purposes.

Who we are

The site is operated as an independent educational and charitable project under the name "The Stephen Hawking Guide". It is not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, the Estate of Stephen Hawking. References on this site to Stephen Hawking and to his work are made in the ordinary course of educational commentary, criticism and review. For any question about these terms, please contact us at contact@stephenhawking.co.uk.

What the site is, and what it is not

The site is a free guide to the life, science and ideas of the physicist Stephen Hawking (1942 to 2018), written for students, educators and general readers. We make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information is accurate, but the site is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied. In particular:

The content is provided for general information only. It is not, and must not be relied upon as, scientific, medical, financial, legal or any other professional advice. For medical questions, including questions about motor neurone disease, please consult a qualified medical professional. For specialist scientific questions please consult the primary peer-reviewed literature linked from the relevant pages.

Some pages explain matters of theoretical physics that are themselves the subject of ongoing scientific debate. We aim to indicate clearly where the science is settled and where it is contested, but the site is a guide to public understanding, not a substitute for the underlying scientific work.

Use of the content

The site, including its text, design, code, illustrations, interactive tools and downloadable materials (the "content"), is owned by or licensed to the operator of the site, unless otherwise stated.

You may:

• Read the site for personal and educational use.
• Share links to the site by URL.
• Quote short passages from the site for non-commercial educational, journalistic or research purposes, with attribution to "The Stephen Hawking Guide (stephenhawking.co.uk)".
• Download and read the free companion ebook for personal use.

You may not, without our prior written permission:

• Reproduce substantial parts of the site's text, design or code on another website or in another publication.
• Use the content to train, fine-tune or evaluate machine learning or artificial intelligence models, except where we have explicitly permitted this through standard web crawling conventions.
• Use the content for any unlawful purpose, or in a way that damages our reputation or the reputation of others mentioned on the site.
• Attempt to gain unauthorised access to the site, to interfere with its operation, or to introduce malicious code.
• Scrape or harvest content from the site at a rate or in a manner that places an unreasonable load on its hosting.
• Use the site to harass any person mentioned in its content.

Where the site reproduces images or other material under the public domain, under a Creative Commons licence, or with the permission of a rights holder, that material remains subject to its own licence and attribution requirements. Where image credits are shown on the site they form part of these terms.

User-submitted content and feedback

The site does not currently host user accounts, public comments or user-submitted content. If you contact us by email with corrections, suggestions or other feedback, you grant us permission to act on that feedback freely, including by amending pages on the site, without obligation to credit you, attribute the suggestion, or pay any fee. We will not publish your name or email address unless you ask us to.

Affiliate links and external sites

The site contains links to external websites, including Amazon. Where a link is an affiliate link, it is clearly identified as such, and following it and making a purchase may earn the site a small commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate the site earns from qualifying purchases. A share of any revenue earned is directed to motor neurone disease research, as described on the support page.

We are not responsible for the content of external websites, for their privacy practices, or for the goods or services they sell. Following an external link is at your own discretion and risk.

Interactive tools

The site includes interactive educational tools, including a black hole temperature calculator, a Penrose diagram explainer and an entropy visualiser. These tools are provided for educational illustration. They use simplified models of the underlying physics and are not intended for research, engineering or any other practical use. Output from these tools should not be relied upon as a precise scientific result.

Free ebook

The companion ebook is provided free of charge for personal use. The same restrictions on commercial reuse, redistribution and AI training described above apply. We make no warranty as to its fitness for any particular purpose.

Our responsibility to you

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for any other liability that cannot be limited or excluded by law in England & Wales.

Subject to that, to the maximum extent permitted by law we shall not be liable to you for any loss or damage, whether direct or indirect, that arises out of your use of, or inability to use, the site, including any reliance you place on its content. The site is provided free of charge for general educational and informational purposes and the limits of our responsibility reflect that.

We make no warranty that the site will be available without interruption, that it will be free of errors or omissions, or that it will be free of viruses or other harmful components.

Changes to the site and to these terms

We may add, change or remove content on the site at any time, and we may update these terms from time to time. The date at the top of this page indicates when the terms were last updated. Continued use of the site after a change to these terms constitutes acceptance of the change. Significant changes will be noted on the site.

Governing law

These terms, and any dispute arising out of or in connection with them or your use of the site, are governed by the law of England & Wales, and the courts of England & Wales have exclusive jurisdiction over any such dispute.

Contact

If you have any question about these terms, including any request for permission to reuse content beyond the limits described above, please contact us at contact@stephenhawking.co.uk.

For matters relating to personal data, please see the Privacy & Cookies Policy.