A new, free display which explores Professor Stephen Hawking’s remarkable life as a scientist, science communicator, and as a person who lived with motor neurone disease. The temporary display features significant objects from Hawking’s office, the extraordinary contents of which were acquired for the nation by the Science Museum Group in May 2021 through the UK Government’s Acceptance in Lieu scheme. These important items provide insights into a scientist who challenged perceptions of theoretical physics with a playful, imaginative and social approach to work.
Lucy Hawking said: ‘It’s wonderful to see my father’s working environment recreated at the Science Museum as part of a highlights display. It was such a unique and fascinating environment, and I am delighted his office has been recreated in order to inspire scientists of the future.’
In Stephen Hawking at Work, visitors can see Hawking’s rare PhD thesis, his spectacles adapted to aid communication and even an invitation to the time travellers’ party Hawking hosted. Visitors across the country will be able to study these fascinating items up close for the first time as the display embarks on a tour of the Science Museum Group’s museums, opening next at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester later this summer. The display is expected to tour the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, the National Railway Museum in York and Locomotion in Shildon, County Durham, during 2023 and 2024. Global audiences will be able to explore hundreds of remarkable items from Hawking’s working life as this significant acquisition is catalogued, photographed and published to the Science Museum Group’s popular online collection in 2022.
Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries said: ‘I am thrilled the Science Museum Group, in its exciting new display, is honouring one of the greatest British scientists ever to have lived. It is fantastic that these objects are going on public display across the country to inspire a new generation of thinkers and scientists.’
As a scientist, Hawking took a playful approach to collaboration. This is exemplified through one of Hawking’s most treasured possessions: a doodle-covered blackboard from the Superspace and Supergravity conference in 1980. Delegates covered the blackboard in equations, cartoons and jokes about each other. Hawking had this souvenir framed and hung in his office and now, forty years later, the Science Museum’s conservators have stabilised the chalk dust so it can continue to be enjoyed by those who see it.
Hawking’s sense of humour is further illustrated by one of his favourite pastimes, making bets with his peers on scientific debates. Perhaps the most famous is the Black Hole Information Paradox bet he made with Kip Thorne and John Preskill and visitors can see the wager Hawking signed with his thumbprint.
The display also contains one of only five known copies of Hawking’s PhD thesis. This significant thesis examined possible solutions to Einstein’s equations of general relativity to demonstrate that the universe must have originated in a singularity, a single point of infinite density. The thesis also provides an early example of Hawking’s clear writing style when dealing with complex ideas – a style which ultimately enabled him to become a compelling communicator of science.
