Stephen Hawking | Signed photograph, 1979

Hawking, Stephen

Signed photograph

Magazine photo feature entitled "Men of the Year 1979" including Hawking ("Has become a world authority on the 'black holes' in space in spite of suffering from a crippling disease of the nervous system") and five other individuals from different walks of life, signed by Hawking beneath his photo, also signed by the athlete Sebastian Coe ("World record holder for the 800 metre, 1500 metres and the mile"), Superintendent Coxswain Brian Bevan (a lifeboatman with multiple awards for bravery), and the police officer Nelson George Biday ("Overpowered an axeman killer"), on a bifolium with details of speakers at the annual luncheon and previous award-winners, small folio, apparently removed from a commemorative brochure

A RARE SIGNED PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN HAWKING. 1979 was the year of Hawking's election to the prestigious Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge, evidently enough to bring recognition with this British award, but his popular celebrity that was to come with A Brief History of Time (1988) was still several years in the future. By the time Hawking achieved worldwide fame he was unable to write using his own hand.