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Having devoted his life to the conundrums of the cosmos, Prof Stephen Hawking has left behind a mystery of his own amid the eclectic contents of his former office. From a report: The Cambridge cosmologist, who died in 2018 at the age of 76, treasured a blackboard that became smothered with cartoons, doodles and equations at a conference he arranged in 1980. But what all the graffiti and in-jokes mean is taking some time to unravel. The blackboard — as much a perplexing work of art as a memento from the history of physics — goes on display for the first time on Thursday as part of a collection of office items acquired by the Science Museum in London.
The hope for Juan-Andres Leon, the curator of Stephen Hawking’s office, is that surviving attenders of the conference on superspace and supergravity held in Cambridge more than 40 years ago swing by and explain what some of the sketches and comments mean. “We’ll certainly try and extract their interpretations,” Leon said. 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.
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