DUBAI 2 November 2018: An online auction is currently going on for 22 lots offering an insight into the great physicist Stephen Hawking’s personal and academic life.
These include one of Hawking’s iconic wheelchairs, the proceeds of which will benefit charity.
Also on the hammer is a Brief History of Time signed with a thumbprint.
The auction started on October 31 and will end on November 8.
A brilliant mind whose discoveries have shaped our understanding of the universe, Stephen Hawking , who died on 14 March this year, is one of the most well regarded physicists of all time. Christie’s is presenting the remarkable selection of 22 lots from the legendary physicist’s estate during an online sale entitled ‘On the Shoulders of Giants’.
The lots featured in Christie’s online sale range from the offprints (the scientist’s own printed copies)of his most important papers, including his seminal ‘Black hole explosions’ of 1974, to a selection of his medals and awards, a copy of his best-selling ‘A Brief History of Time’ (1988) signed with a thumbprint, a bomber jacket, and the script for one of his appearances on The Simpsons.
Estimates in this auction start as low as £100. The last lot of the sale, one of Hawking’s iconic wheelchairs, will be sold to benefit the Stephen Hawking Foundation and the Motor Neurone Disease Association.
Lucy Hawking said: “We are very pleased to have the assistance of Christie’s to help us with the important matter of managing our beloved father’s archives and his unique and precious collection of personal and professional belongings, chronicling his life and work.
“We hope to be able to offer our father’s archive to the nation through the Acceptance in Lieu* process as we feel it is a huge part of his legacy but also of the history of science in this country. We are also giving admirers of his work the chance to acquire a memento of our father’s extraordinary life in the shape of a small selection of evocative and fascinating items. In addition, we will be auctioning one of our father’s historic wheelchairs, the proceeds of which will be donated to the Motor Neurone Disease Association and the Stephen Hawking Foundation.”
When he wrote his thesis in October 1965, Hawking was already suffering with the early symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (‘ALS’), and it was his wife Jane, whom he had married three months earlier, who typed out the 117 pages of the document, painstakingly adding the mathematical equations by hand.
The thesis is signed in Hawking’s distinctively shaky handwriting, with the statement ‘This dissertation is my original work. S.W. Hawking’. Of the 22 lots featured in the sale, 12 are offprints of Hawking’s most important papers, including ‘Origin of Structure in the Universe’, ‘Spectrum of Wormholes’ and ‘Fundamental Breakdown of Physics in Gravitational Collapse’, illustrated below.
The online sale ‘On the Shoulders of Giants’ will present these offprints alongside rare and important autograph letters and manuscripts by leading scientific forebears including Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein. News regarding this auction will be announced in the coming days.
