Stephen Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, in Oxford, exactly three hundred years after Galileo Galilei died. Hawking's father said. Frank Hawking is a biology researcher and mother Isobel Hawking is a political activist. Hawking's parents lived in north London. World War II was raging in London. After Hawking was born, they moved to Oxford for safety. After Hawking was born, they returned to London. Hawking has two sisters, Filippa and Mary. The Hawking family also had a foster son named Edward. Hawking's parents live in East London, but they moved to Oxford when Isabel was pregnant. At that time the Germans regularly bombed London. According to a Hawking publication, German V-2 missiles hit a few lanes of their home.
After Stephen's birth, they returned to London. There, Stephen's father served as head of the parasitology department at the National Institute for Medical Research.
In 1950 the Hawking family moved to St. Albert, Hertfordshire. From 1950 to 1953, Hawking attended St. Albert's Girls' School. (At that time, boys could go to girls' schools until they were 10 years old. Later, boys went to school. His results at school were good, but not extraordinary. He maintained a close relationship with the school, naming one of the school's four houses and a series of classroom lectures under his own name, and gave lengthy interviews to the school magazine "The Albanian".
Hawking had an innate interest in science. Hawking's father wanted Hawking to be a doctor like him. But Hawking was admitted to Oxford University College to study mathematics. But since no mathematics courses were taught there, Hawking began studying physics. His interests at the time were thermodynamics, relativity, and quantum mechanics.