Stephen Hawking's thesis crashes Cambridge University website

Stephen Hawking’s doctoral thesis of 1966 has gone online, causing Cambridge University’s website to eventually crash down.

The university said the historic thesis was the most-demanded item in its online repository which was free to download publicly on Monday.

Fancy a bit of light reading? We've put #StephenHawking's 1966 PhD thesis online to celebrate #openaccessweek https://t.co/bakmB4kRtl

— Cambridge University (@Cambridge_Uni) October 23, 2017

Spokesperson of University of Cambridge said, ““We have had a huge response to Prof Hawking’s decision to make his PhD thesis publicly available to download, with almost 60,000 downloads in less than 24 hours. As a result, visitors to our Open Access site may find that it is performing slower than usual and may at times be temporarily unavailable.”



The thesis which he wrote as a 24-year-old more than 50 years ago, is known as the Properties of Expanding Universe, which talks about the many ways the universe’s origins has resonated through the scientist’s career.

Hawking said he hoped his thesis would “"inspire people around the world to look up at the stars and not down at their feet; to wonder about our place in the universe and to try and make sense of the cosmos."

This article originally appeared on The Guardian.