Stephen William Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, in Oxford, England — exactly 300 times after the death of Galileo Galilei. This emblematic coexistence would herald the extraordinary scientific path Hawking would take. He was the eldest of four children in a largely intellectual family. His father, Frank Hawking, was a medical experimenter specializing in tropical conditions, while his mama , Isobel, was one of the first women to attend Oxford in the 1930s. The family was eccentric, frequently eating refections in silence while reading books, and they valued education and curiosity above all.