Stephen Hawking’s Prized Possessions up for Sale

Some of the most significant possessions of the late physicist Stephen Hawking is going for auction at Christie’s in London. The possessions include a copy of his Ph.D. thesis, his wheelchair and a script of the TV series The Simpsons.

Among the prized possession, which will be up for auction, the most sought-after artifact will be one of five existing copies of Hawking’s 1965 Cambridge University Ph.D. thesis titling “Properties of Expanding Universes”, which carries an estimated price of £100,000 to £150,000 ($130,000 to $195,000).

The thesis is handwritten and thus it proves his original work. Before the death of Hawkings, his alma mater, the University of Cambridge has put the thesis on its open access repository. When the work went live on the website, the requests to view the research led to the crashing of the website, with more than 60,000 downloads in less than 24 hours.

Stephen Hawking died at the age 76 years in the month of March this year after surviving a debilitating disease for more than 50 years. He was also a cosmologist, astronomer, mathematician and a prolific author, whose landmark book “A Brief History of Time” has sold more than 10 million copies till date.

Stephen Hawking suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ALS, a neurodegenerative disease that is also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was diagnosed first with the disease in the year 1963, when he was only 21 years of age and doctors then gave him only a few years to live.

The disease led Stephen Hawking to paralysis and made him dependent on a wheelchair for mobility. He was able to move a few of his fingers on one hand and was completely dependent on others or on technology for everything like for bathing, dressing, eating and even his speech.

The first wheelchair, which Hawking used and was his companion is also up for sale and it is estimated to be priced between £10,000 and £15,000.

According to auction house Christie’s, “Hawking initially resisted the idea of using a wheelchair in the late 1960s; by the late 1970s, he was using motorized models like the present example, and was even renowned for being a rather wild driver. By the late 1980s he was at the height of his fame, and given his extensive travels to conferences and public events, as well as the scope of his intellectual explorations of space-time, this is arguably both literally and metaphorically the most-traveled wheelchair in history”.

The proceeds from the wheelchair lot will go to the Stephen Hawking Foundation and the Motor Neurone Disease Association. Other personal belongings of Hawking’s to be auctioned also include a bomber jacket, collection of his medals and a copy of his famous book “A Brief History of Time” which is signed with his thumb and is expected to fetch between £2,000 and £3,000. All the pieces for auction will be on display in London and are officially up for sale from October 31 to November 8.