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 is at an all-time high: Stephen Hawking's doctoral thesis of that name crashed Cambridge University's open-access repository on the first day the document was posted online.
The Cambridge Library 

 available for download from its website, from what it called a high-resolution "72 Mb" file to a digitized version that is less than half that file size. A "reduced" version was offered that was even smaller — but intense interest overwhelmed the servers.


By late Monday local time, the well-known theoretical physicist's thesis had been viewed more than 60,000 times, says Stuart Roberts, deputy head of research communications at Cambridge. He added, "Other popular theses might have 100 views per month."

After what a Cambridge Open Access official called unprecedented interest, the library's servers seemed to be coping with the load better on Tuesday.

Hawking agreed to make the thesis available for free download on Cambridge's Apollo repository, in a deal that marks Open Access 2017 and signals the university's new push to make more academic work freely available. In a statement released by the university, Hawking said:


Before Monday's announcement, Hawking's doctoral work — officially, Ph.D. 5437 — has resided on a shelf at Cambridge, its more than 100 pages bound in a sea-green cover. On the inside cover of the thesis is a handwritten reminder: "No copying without author's consent." Anyone who wanted a copy needed to pay the library a fee of 65 pounds (about $85), 

.
Hours after it was put online, the thesis began to put stress on the Apollo site and downloads — of any of the three file versions — became impossible. A 

 with photographed pages remains available.


"We have had a huge response to Professor Hawking's decision to make his Ph.D. thesis publicly available to download," a spokesperson for the university said. "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."


Hawking submitted the thesis in October 1965, when he was 23 years old. Two years earlier, he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — the motor-neuron disease that doctors 

predicted would kill him within a few years

 will no doubt understand that there is little point in becoming frustrated over a one-day slowdown on a Web server. In the meantime, we can offer a glimpse into what Hawking wrote.


Here's the first paragraph of Hawking's introduction:

The thesis consists of four chapters: "The Hoyle-Narliker theory of gravitation," "Perturbations," "Gravitational radiation in an expanding universe" and "Singularities."


The thesis was approved in February 1966. In its citation, Cambridge has added a line stating, "This thesis has been made openly available with the kind permission of Professor Stephen Hawking."  Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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By late Monday, the thesis had been viewed more than 60,000 times, a Cambridge official says. He adds, "Other popular theses might have 100 views per month."

Stephen Hawking's Ph.D. thesis crashes Cambridge site after it's posted online

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