The Science Museum in London acquired hundreds of items from cosmologist Stephen Hawking's office and has now put a selection of the artifacts on display for public viewing. The showpiece is the wonderfully weird blackboard seen above that hung in Hawking's department at the University of Cambridge. From The Guardian:
Joining the blackboard in a temporary display called Stephen Hawking at Work is a rare copy of the physicist's 1966 PhD thesis, his wheelchair, a formal bet that information swallowed by a black hole is lost for ever, and a host of celebrity memorabilia, including a personalised jacket given to him by the creators of the Simpsons for his many appearances on the show[…]
Among the more unusual objects is a small glass apple – a gift from researchers at Intel and a nod to Hawking's position as Lucasian professor, a post formerly held by Sir Isaac Newton. The ornament has been painted to evoke the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the big bang.
image: Isidora Bojovic/Science Museum Group
