Stephen Hawking Trivia
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60 free Stephen Hawking trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Stephen Hawking trivia quiz covers the physicist, the author and the public figure. The easy questions handle the outline most people know: Oxford, Cambridge, the diagnosis at 21, A Brief History of Time, black holes, the wheelchair and the voice. From there it goes into the details of a remarkable life: the school nickname, the computer built from clock parts, the 1,000 hours of study at Oxford, the viva bluff, the supervisor he did not want, the thesis that became the most-downloaded document in Cambridge's archive. The harder end is for people who have read the biographies or the physics: the no-hair theorem, the North Pole analogy of the no-boundary proposal, the Black Hole War, the wagers with Kip Thorne and Peter Higgs, the publisher he chose for his bestseller, the software that gave him a voice, the party nobody attended, his Desert Island Discs choices and the equation on his memorial stone. Every answer was checked against Hawking's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our physics and space quizzes are the natural next step.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Hawking was born in Oxford in 1942 into a family of what profession?
Physicians
His mother came from a family of doctors in Glasgow and his father was a medical researcher; he found medicine 'too inexact' and chose physics.
Q 02Which prestigious Cambridge chair did Hawking occupy from 1979 to 2009?
Lucasian Professor of Mathematics
University rules obliged him to retire from it at 67; he stayed on as director of research.
Q 03At the age of 21 Hawking was diagnosed with what condition?
Motor neurone disease
It was a rare early-onset, slow-progressing form that paralysed him gradually over five decades.
Q 04How long did doctors initially expect Hawking to live after his 1963 diagnosis?
Two years
He lived another 55 years, dying in 2018 at 76.
Q 05The eccentric Hawking family travelled around their Hertfordshire town in what unusual vehicle?
A converted London taxicab
Meals at home were often spent with everyone silently reading a book.
Q 06As a boy Hawking spent four months in Mallorca at the home of which poet, a friend of his mother's?
Robert Graves
The trip happened during one of his father's long research absences in Africa.
Q 07What was Hawking's nickname at school?
Einstein
He was not initially a strong student, and only later showed his aptitude for science.
Q 08Hawking and his school friends built a computer from an old telephone switchboard and what?
Clock parts
The teacher, Dikran Tahta, inspired him to study mathematics at university.
Q 09Hawking's father Frank was a medical researcher specialising in what?
Tropical diseases
His frequent research trips to Africa left the rest of the family free for adventures such as four months in Mallorca.
Q 10Which sport did Hawking take up at Oxford, as a cox with a daredevil reputation?
Rowing
His coach recalled him steering crews on risky courses that led to damaged boats.
Q 11Roughly how many hours did Hawking estimate he studied over his three years at Oxford?
1,000
He found the work 'ridiculously easy' and answered only theoretical physics questions in his finals.
Q 12At his Oxford viva, Hawking told the examiners that if awarded a Second he would do what?
Stay where he was
The examiners, he was told later, realised they were talking to someone far cleverer than most of themselves, and gave him the First.
Q 13Which cosmologist was Hawking disappointed to be assigned as his PhD supervisor instead of Fred Hoyle?
Dennis Sciama
It was Sciama's encouragement that pulled him back to work after the depression that followed his diagnosis.
Q 21Hawking bet Kip Thorne that Cygnus X-1 was not a black hole, describing the wager as what?
An insurance policy
If black holes turned out not to exist, at least he would win the bet; he conceded in 1990.
Q 22From 1974 onwards, Hawking spent about a month almost every year at which institution in California?
Caltech
His first stint there was a year-long visiting professorship, with a live-in graduate student to help with his care.
Q 23Hawking's 1979 inaugural lecture as Lucasian Professor asked whether the end was in sight for what?
Theoretical physics
He tipped N = 8 supergravity as the theory that might finish the job.
Q 14At which Cambridge college did Hawking begin his graduate work in October 1962?
Trinity Hall
He first got there after a trip to Iran with a friend to celebrate his Oxford First.
Q 15Hawking held a fellowship from 1966 for the rest of his life at which Cambridge college?
Gonville and Caius
The college flew its flag at half-mast when he died in 2018.
Q 16Hawking's 1966 PhD thesis was titled 'Properties of' what?
Expanding Universes
When Cambridge put it online in 2017 it instantly became the most requested item in the university's repository.
Q 17With which mathematician did Hawking prove the singularity theorems and later share the 1988 Wolf Prize?
Roger Penrose
In 1970 they showed that a universe obeying general relativity must have begun as a singularity.
Q 18Per the 'no-hair theorem' Hawking supported, a black hole has only mass, electric charge and what?
Rotation
The theorem, named by John Archibald Wheeler, says how the hole formed leaves no other trace.
Q 19In 1974 Hawking proposed that black holes emit radiation and may eventually do what?
Evaporate
The idea was controversial at first but accepted as a major breakthrough by the late 1970s.
Q 20Which physicist dismissed Hawking radiation as 'absolute rubbish' after hearing him lecture on it?
John G. Taylor
Experimental teams have since claimed to detect the effect in acoustic and optical analogues of black holes.
Q 24Hawking's 1981 black-hole information claim started a 'war' with Gerard 't Hooft and which physicist?
Leonard Susskind
By 2014 Hawking was calling the information-loss idea his 'biggest blunder'.
Q 25The Hartle-Hawking 'no-boundary' proposal likened the beginning of the universe to which point on Earth?
The North Pole
One cannot go north of it, yet there is no edge there, just the place where all north-running lines meet.
Q 26Which mass-market publisher did Hawking choose for A Brief History of Time?
Bantam Books
He wanted the advance to pay for his children's education and household costs.
Q 27For a record-breaking how many weeks did A Brief History of Time sit on the Sunday Times bestseller list?
237
Published in 1988, it had sold an estimated 9 million copies by 2009.
Q 28Who directed the 1991 documentary film A Brief History of Time?
Errol Morris
Hawking had wanted a purely scientific film but was persuaded to let it be biographical too; it was a critical success but not widely released.
Q 29In 2009 Hawking threw a party for whom, sending out the invitations only after it was over?
Time travellers
As he expected, nobody turned up, which he took as light-hearted support for his conjecture that travel into the past is impossible.
Q 30Hawking lost a long-running bet in 2012 when which particle was discovered at CERN?
The Higgs boson
He promptly said Peter Higgs deserved the Nobel Prize, which Higgs won in 2013.