Interest in "Properties of Expanding Universes" is at an all-time high: Stephen Hawking's doctoral thesis of that name has crashed Cambridge University's open-access repository on the first day the document was posted online.
The Cambridge Library made several PDF files of the thesis available for download from its website, from what it called a high-resolution "72 Mb" file to a digitized version that's 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 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."
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:
"By making my PhD thesis Open Access, I hope to 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. Anyone, anywhere in the world should have free, unhindered access to not just my research, but to the research of every great and enquiring mind across the spectrum of human understanding."
Before today'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), the BBC reports.
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 separate online entry 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."
Fans of the professor who wrote A Brief History of Time will no doubt understand that there's 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.
