# Hawking Index

> English word · Proper noun

## Definitions
1. A humorous measure of how far people will, on average, read through a particular book before giving up.

## Etymology
Invented by American mathematician Jordan Ellenberg in 2014, and named after English theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, whose book A Brief History of Time (1988) has been called “the most unread book of all time”.

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/hawking-index