Stephen Hawking's memoir to be out on 12 September

New Delhi: Famed physicist Stephen Hawking's memoir will hit bookstores in September. My Brief History, published by Bantam Press, will give readers a concise, witty, and candid account of the life of this intensely private and world-changing man, in his own words.The book will be out on 12 September.[caption id="attachment_982357" align="alignleft" width="380"]

Stephen Hawking. Reuters[/caption]Technological developments mean that My Brief History is the first book in Hawking's illustrious career that he has written entirely on his own, resulting in his most personal book to date, the publishers said.In My Brief History, 71-year-old Hawking explores the genesis of his master work as well as his youth in bomb-ravaged London, his years as a student at Oxford and Cambridge as his illness developed, his marriages and families, and his intellectual passions.It is lavishly illustrated with rarely seen photographs from his childhood and schooldays. Says Sally Gaminara, publishing director of Bantam Press, "As publishers of Stephen Hawking's iconic A Brief History of Time in 1988 and all his subsequent titles, we are delighted to be able to publish his memoir 25 years later. It is a remarkable testimony to his courage and tenacity that we can do so."A Brief History of Time has sold more than 10 million copies in 40 languages. Hawking was for 30 years the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and is one of the most brilliant cosmologists of our time. At the age of 21, he was diagnosed with ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease), defying his prognosis while offering the world some of themost profound insights into the universe since Sir Isaac Newton.Despite spending most of his life in a wheelchair, he is able to communicate through a computer. PTI