Stephen Hawking wheelchair sells for nearly $400G's at auction

  • by Brittany Mendoza
  • in Research
  • — Nov 11, 2018
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A wheelchair used by the late Professor Stephen Hawking and a copy of his doctoral thesis have fetched nearly £1m between them at auction.

Proceeds from the chair's sale will go to the Stephen Hawking Foundation and the Motor Neurone Disease Association. Rehana Popal, an immigration specialist in London, said that in two years she had lost six instructions on similar grounds.

A red leather wheelchair that Hawking used from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, driving himself using a joystick, sold for £296,750 while an early edition of his bestselling book "A Brief History of Time" marked with a thumbprint, fetched £68,750.

Hawking's 117-page dissertation "Properties of expanding universes" from 1965 sold for 584,750 pounds ($764,024) well ahead of the estimate of up to 150,000 pounds.

English physicist Stephen Hawking, who died in March this year, shortly before his death had predicted that in the future there will be a race of supermen, who will be a threat to humanity.

One of his most famous works was his landmark book a "A Brief History of Time", which sold more than 10 million copies. That is more than 15 times the pre-sale estimate made public by Christie's.

In total, the auction, which included 52 lots, raised more than 1.8 million pounds (roughly $2.35 million, AU$3.24 million). Hawking's dissertation was the single most expensive item.

An early wheelchair raised £296,750 for charity and a script for his appearance on The Simpsons sold for £6,250.

Along with inclusion of Hawking's personal belongings, the auction also included belongings linked to scientists including Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein, wrote The Guardian. Letters and manuscripts belonged to Newton, Einstein and Darwin were also put on the sale.

"We are also giving admirers of his work the chance to acquire a memento of our father s extraordinary life in the shape of a small selection of evocative and fascinating items".

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