Singlehandedly, Stephen Hawking has profoundly transformed the way we look at the universe. Renowned worldwide as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists since Einstein, Hawking has rendered a large number of modern ideas about nature and the evolution of the cosmos accessible to a general audience. Mixing autobiographical narrative with reflections on his research, here he presents his latest ideas about the nature of time, the structure of matter and the future of the universe.A professor at the University of Cambridge, Stephen Hawking is the author of the international best-seller A Brief History of Time.