In 1980, Stephen Hawking gave his first lecture as Lucasian Professor at the University of Cambridge. The lecture was called “Is the end in sight for theoretical physics?” Hawking, who later became my ...

Note: For a definition of unfamiliar terms, see our glossary. The fundamental particles of the universe that physicists have identified—electrons, neutrinos, quarks, and so on—are the "letters" of all ...

String theory is the idea that the fundamental particles we observe are not point-like dots, but rather tiny strings. String theory is one of the most famous ideas in modern physics, but it is also ...