Dikran Tahta taught Stephen Hawking at St Albans School, before joining the Graduate School of Education as a Lecturer in mathematics education in 1961.
Image credit: The Tahta family

A wonderful tribute to Exeter academic Dikran Tahta from Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking has made a video paying tribute to his maths teacher, former Exeter Academic Dikran Tahta.

Stephen Hawking recorded this video paying tribute to the teacher who inspired him most.

Dikran Tahta taught Stephen Hawking at St Albans School, before joining the Graduate School of Education as a Lecturer in mathematics education in 1961. He remained at Exeter until his retirement in late 1981.

Dikran Tahta opened his eyes to maths, which Hawking describes as the 'blueprint of the universe'.

'Many teachers were boring,' Professor Hawking says in the video. 'Not Mr. Tahta. His classes were lively and exciting. Everything could be debated. Together we built my first computer, it was made with electro-mechanical switches.'

'Thanks to Mr Tahta, I became a professor of mathematics at Cambridge, a position once held by Isaac Newton.'

Prof Hawking says, 'When each of us thinks about what we can do in life, chances are, we can do it because of a teacher.'

Date: 10 March 2016