Stephen Hawking, the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, has made important theoretical contributions to gravitational theory and has played a major role in the development of cosmology and black hole physics.

Hawking's early work, partly in collaboration with Roger Penrose, showed the significance of spacetime singularities for the big bang and black holes. His later work has been concerned with a deeper understanding of these two issues. The work required extensive use of the two great intellectual achievements of the first half of the Twentieth Century: general relativity and quantum mechanics; and these are reflected in the reprinted articles. Hawking's key contributions on black hole radiation and the no-boundary condition on the origin of the universe are included.

The present compilation of Stephen Hawking's most important work also includes an introduction by him, which guides the reader though the major highlights of the volume. This volume is thus an essential item in any library and will be an important reference source for those interested in theoretical physics and applied mathematics.

It is an excellent thing to have so many of Professor Hawking's most important contributions to the theory of black holes and space-time singularities all collected together in one handy volume. I am very glad to have them". Roger Penrose (Oxford)

"This was an excellent idea to put the best papers by Stephen Hawking together. Even his papers written many years ago remain extremely useful for those who study classical and quantum gravity. By watching the evolution of his ideas one can get a very clear picture of the development of quantum cosmology during thelast quarter of this century". Andrei Linde (Stanford)

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