Naturally, Stephen Hawking pops up on every list of historical geniuses. On the New York Times bestseller list for a record 237 weeks, his famed book was called A Brief History of what?

The full name of Hawking's book is A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, and was first published in 1988. Predating the age of the Internet, where we could look everything up instantaneously, the intention of his book was for people with no expertise in physics. In other words, it was for the layperson.

Asked by Tom Cohen · Last updated 5 years ago · 3.5K views