Stephen Hawking is widely regarded as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists of our time. This book contains a personal selection of his most significant papers on gravitational theory applied to cosmology and black holes.

The singularities of gravitational collapse and cosmology, R.Penrose; the event horizon; particle creation by black holes; cosmological event horizons, thermodynamics and particle creation, G.W.Gibbons; action integrals and partition functions in quantum gravity, G.W.Gibbons; introductory survey, general relativity - an Einstein centenary survey, W.Israel; the path integral approach to quantum gravity in general relativity; wave function of the universe, J.B.Hartle; quantum cosmology; the origin of structure in the universe, J.J.Halliwell; wormholes in spacetime; the chronology protection conjecture.

"It is an excellent thing to have so many of Professor Hawking's most important contributions to the theory of black holes and space-time singularities all collected together in one handy volume. I am very glad to have them." Roger Penrose (Oxford) "This was an excellent idea to put the best papers by Stephen Hawking together. Even his papers written many years ago remain extremely useful for those who study classical and quantum gravity. By watching the evolution of his ideas one can get a very clear picture of the development of quantum cosmology during the last quarter of this century." Andrei Linde Stanford Univ. "This review could have been quite short: 'The book contains a selection of 21 of Stephen Hawking's most significant papers with an overview written by the author'. This would be sufficient to convince any researcher, student or librarian to acquire the book, so indisputable is the contribution of this man to the theoretical physics of the last half of our century ... Collected together, these brilliant works constitute a valuable contribution to the literature on modern classical and quantum gravity and cosmology. This book will certainly be a source of inspiration for new generations of physicists entering into this fascinating area of research." D Gal'tsov Classical & Quantum Gravity