Stephen Hawking Exhibition Hopes To Uncover His Blackboard’s Unsolved Secrets

Famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking left behind one of his most recognizable possessions when he passed away in 2018: a treasured blackboard. 

Filled with doodles, drawings, and equations from a conference in 1980, not all of the blackboard’s contents has been uncovered just yet, though a new exhibition hopes to shed new light on the enigmatic artifact. 

For the first time, the blackboard will be open to the public at the Science Museum of London, with curator Juan-Andres Leon hoping that surviving attendees of the bygone conference will re-appear to decipher what the scientist’s sketches truly mean. 

As Science Alert noted, there are many questions to be answered, such as the meaning of the phrase “stupor symmetry,” or why there’s a floppy-nosed squid scaling a brick wall. What exactly is the bearded Martian featured at the center of the board?

According to The Guardian, aside from the famed blackboard, a rare copy of Hawking’s 1966 PhD thesis, his wheelchair, a formal bet on information lost to a black hole, and a collection of celebrity memorabilia will be on display at the exhibition. 

“People don’t have much of a glimpse into what everyday life was like for Stephen Hawking, and because he was a theoretical physicist, it’s hard to convey what he might do on a random Monday,” explained Leon.

“The office provides a lot of material and I think people knew that this was more than the collection of its parts, that it really reflects what made Stephen Hawking unique,” he added. 

The exhibition will run from now till June 12, 2022, before moving to other museums in the UK. 

[via The Guardian and Science Alert, images via Science Museum Group]