Hawking was born on 8 January 1942[1] in Oxford, England, to Frank and Isobel Hawking.[21][22] His mother was Scottish.[23] Despite their families' financial constraints, both parents attended the University of Oxford, where Frank studied medicine and Isobel, Philosophy, Politics and Economics.[22] The two met shortly after the beginning of the Second World War at a medical research institute where she was working as a secretary and he as a medical researcher.[22][24] They lived in Highgate, but as London was being bombed in those years, Isobel went to Oxford to give birth in greater safety.[25] Hawking has two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary, and an adopted brother, Edward.[26]
In 1950, when his father became head of the division of parasitology at the National Institute for Medical Research, Hawking and his family moved to St Albans, Hertfordshire.[27][28] In St Albans, the family were considered highly intelligent and somewhat eccentric;[27][29] meals were often spent with each person silently reading a book.[27] They lived a frugal existence in a large, cluttered, and poorly maintained house, and travelled in a converted London taxicab.[30][31] During one of Hawking's father's frequent absences working in Africa,[32] the rest of the family spent four months in Majorca visiting his mother's friend Beryl and her husband, the poet Robert Graves.[33]