A new touring exhibition focusing on the extraordinary life of physicist Professor Stephen Hawking has stopped off in Bradford

This beautiful artefact, in effect a glowing paperweight, is worth (in practical terms) next to nothing. Since the owner was the man who was the pre-eminent physicist of his generation, a bewilderingly talented mathematician, best-selling author and media personality, it is simply priceless. It was given to him to celebrate his 75th birthday. “What do you give a man who has everything?” smiles Juan-Andres Leon, Curator of Stephen Hawking’s Office, and Curator of Physics at the Science Museum Group. Juan-Andres – who came to the UK from his native Colombia – and his team are the people behind a fascinating (and also rather humbling) new touring exhibition called Stephen Hawking at Work, which will tour all the Science Museum sites in Britain. Currently, it can be found and enjoyed at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, and, next year, it will re-appear at the National Railway Museum in York, where it will be given an added little twist. Juan-Andres is not revealing quite what that will be.

Hawking was born in 1942, and died aged 76, in March 2018. It is a mark of his importance to his scientific life, and his contribution to the public’s greater understanding of physics, that he had his memorial service in Westminster Abbey, where his remains are buried in the great nave under a Caithness slate stone – between the memorials to Sir Isaac Newton, and Charles Darwin.

As exhibitions go, it is probably one of the smallest. There are only 15 objects on display, each carefully chose by their curator to celebrate or illustrate something from Hawking’s extraordinary life. Juan-Andres explains that, when Hawking died, having shaken the world of cosmology beyond rational belief (he was then the Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge), there were around a thousand objects in his office. Some of them very mundane, but all of them vital to understanding the man, and his research. They were all offered to the nation, and are housed in secure storage at the Science Museum. This touring exhibition, those 15 items, selected by Juan-Andres, give a picture of Hawking, his achievements, and a life being slowly but inexorably challenged – but never mentally diminished - by the appalling affliction of Motor Neurone Disease. “His contribution to science is incalculable,” says Leon, “quite incredible. But we needed to see the man behind the image, he is, after all, someone whom we all knew, and recognised. But he didn’t want to be idolised, and he certainly didn’t want to be a Saint. He was quoted as saying: ‘I was able to do what I wanted to do, despite the difficulties’.”

As the Motor Neurone Disease advanced, Hawking needed more and more assistance. His carers were, in the main, also his students. But it is a measure of the man that the profits from his scores of books all went into paying for the extra assistance he needed daily. He never wanted to be beholden to the NHS for his care, believing that their resources could be better spent elsewhere. In the exhibition, there’s his all-too-familiar black chair, with his voice synthesiser bolted on to the framework at the back. Juan-Andres explains that, over the years, Hawking steadfastly refused to have his original “black box” constantly updated – despite offers of help in using advancing technology from people like Bill Gates and Sir Richard Branson. “It worked”, says Juan-Andres, “ and he was perfectly happy with that, one of those people who believed in that quote from a member of President Jimmy Carter’s seventies US administration that, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.” But he did come to realise that, as his body slowly shut down, he needed to replace an indicator that enabled him to continue “talking”. He lost facility of his fingers, and asked if there was another way to pinpoint the key words on the screen to the front of the mobility chair. His colleagues went away, thought a little, and came up with yet another “gadget” that defied credulity. They adapted his spectacles. And they too are a key part of the exhibition, and possibly the most moving of all the artefacts. They appear to be perfectly ordinary, but just under the lens for the left eye, there is a small wire “spur” which would have rested on an upper cheek muscle. By twitching and manipulating that tiny muscle, Hawking had his voice. Anyone who isn’t moved by those glasses just cannot understand a man’s determination, and the human spirit to survive. Hawking was festooned with scores of awards, among them the Albert Einstein Medal (as well as the Einstein Award), The Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astrological Society. But the exhibition (which also has film and explanatory inserts and extracts) shows another side to him – he had a great sense of humour, and he loved The Simpsons – their custom-made jacket for him is on display, and it can also be seen, with stills from the series on the walls, in a huge photograph of his office space. Every penny of his earnings were ploughed back into his research and his care needs.

“People tend to think of academics as dry and dusty creatures,” says Juan-Andres, “but he was anything but that. Did I ever meet him? It is one of my most profound regrets that I did not. Do I admire him? Beyond belief. He was simply…..incredible.”

Stephen Hawking at Work runs at the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford, until May 14. www.scienceandmediamuseum.org