Image: Physicist Stephen Hawking in Zero Gravity by Jim Campbell, Aero-News Network (NASA)
The collection of documents, letters and photos is now fully catalogued, and available to all at Cambridge University Library
An archive of Stephen Hawking’s scientific papers, personal correspondence and mementoes has now been fully catalogued and will be made available to those who wish to access at Cambridge University Library.
Known as The Hawking Archive, it was donated to the nation by the Hawking Family in 2021 and includes 113 boxes of archive material, containing tens of thousands of pages of papers relating to his work on theoretical physics, photographs and scripts from films and TV series like The Simpsons, The X Files and Futurama – and souvenirs from his encounters with Popes, Presidents and the public.
There are also personal letters to and from his parents and wider family, including one of the first dictated using his now famous communication system, acquired after his tracheostomy in 1986.
Cambridge University said Professor Hawking’s family wanted his work to be made freely available to future generations of scientists and struck an Acceptance in Lieu (AIL) agreement with HMRC, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Cambridge University Library and Science Museum Group in 2021.
The Science Museum is now home to Professor Hawking’s former office – a unique collection of more than 1,000 objects transferred from the University of Cambridge in 2021.
The agreement means that thousands of pages of Hawking’s scientific and other papers remain in Cambridge, while objects including his wheelchairs, speech synthesisers, and personal memorabilia are displayed at the Science Museum.
Among the Library’s papers are letters sent to officials at The Royal Society, The Royal Opera House, and Cambridge Arts Theatre – through which he demanded better disabled access to their buildings.
Hawking Archivist Susan Gordon, who has spent the past 28 months cataloguing the extraordinary collection of papers, said: “The Library’s Stephen Hawking Archive documents not only his journey to becoming one of the preeminent theoretical physicists of his time, but also how his efforts to communicate science to a general audience catapulted him to the status of pop cultural icon.
“The archive will be a unique resource for researchers interested in Hawking’s scientific work and academic life, his personal life, popular science communication, disability rights, assistive technology, and celebrity. No single thread sits in isolation, they were interwoven in the tapestry of Hawking’s life, including glimpses into how he felt about their convergence.”
