Biography | Stephen Hawking — The Caius Fellowship That Outlasted the Prognosis

People look for Hawking in a physics laboratory on the west side of Cambridge.

The college that kept him for fifty-three years stands here, Gonville and Caius, on Trinity Street.

He was elected a research fellow in 1965, before the doctorate was conferred. In 1969 the college made him a Fellow for Distinction in Science.

Caius sits against Trinity Hall and looks out toward King's Parade. The Gate of Honour and Caius Court are the public face.

The work was done in DAMTP rooms, first on Silver Street and later at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences on Wilberforce Road.

The college was the legal and social home. He ate here.

He was listed here. When he died, Caius opened the book of condolence.

In 1979 he became the seventeenth Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, the chair Isaac Newton had held from 1669.

He kept it until the university's retirement age in 2009, then stayed on as director of research at DAMTP until 2018.

The two-year prognosis of 1963 did not survive contact with this fellowship. He was still on the Caius books more than half a century later.

The college is open to visitors at posted times. The Gate of Honour is a photograph, not a private door.

Photo: Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: NASA StarChild, public domain