Professor Stephen Hawking's PhD viewed two million times

Stephen Hawking's handwriting can be seen on the document

Stephen Hawking's PhD thesis was accessed more than two million times within days of it being made available to the public, it has been revealed.

Prof Hawking's 1966 work proved so popular on the day of its release it crashed the publications section of Cambridge University's website.

More than 500,000 people have also tried to download the paper, titled "Properties of expanding universes".

Dr Arthur Smith, from the university, called the figures "monumental".

Professor Hawking is still working at Cambridge University at the age of 75

"This is far and away the most accessed item we have in the university's Apollo repository," Dr Smith, deputy head of scholarly communication, said.

"I'd hazard a guess that Prof Hawking's PhD thesis is also the most accessed item from any research repository ever. We've never seen numbers like this before."

Factfile: Stephen Hawking

• Born 8 January 1942 in Oxford, England

• Earned place at Oxford University to read natural science in 1959, before studying for his PhD at Cambridge

• By 1963, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and given two years to live

• Outlined his theory that black holes emit "Hawking radiation" in 1974

• Published his book A Brief History of Time in 1988, which has sold more than 10 million copies

• His life story was the subject of the 2014 film The Theory of Everything, starring Eddie Redmayne

Prof Hawking wrote the 134-page document as a 24-year-old postgraduate student while studying at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

The astrophysicist, who has been at Cambridge University since 1962, would later go on to write A Brief History of Time, one of the most influential scientific works ever.

Since it went live at 00:01 BST on Monday, the PhD has been accessed about two million times by about 800,000 unique browsers "from every corner of the globe", according to the university.

The next most read PhD thesis has received just 7,960 downloads in 2017.

The opening page of Stephen Hawking's PhD, when he was a 24-year-old studying at Trinity Hall

Previously, to read Hawking's PhD in full, people had to pay £65 to the university library to scan a copy or physically go to the library to read it.

Cambridge University hopes to encourage its other former academics to make their work available to the public, like Prof Hawking has.

Dr Smith added: "Locking knowledge and information behind closed doors benefits no-one."