Stephen Hawking Exhibition Hopes To Unravel the Mysteries of His Blackboard (theguardian.com) 16
Having devoted his life to the conundrums of the cosmos, Prof Stephen Hawking has left behind a mystery of his own amid the eclectic contents of his former office. From a report: The Cambridge cosmologist, who died in 2018 at the age of 76, treasured a blackboard that became smothered with cartoons, doodles and equations at a conference he arranged in 1980. But what all the graffiti and in-jokes mean is taking some time to unravel. The blackboard -- as much a perplexing work of art as a memento from the history of physics -- goes on display for the first time on Thursday as part of a collection of office items acquired by the Science Museum in London.
The hope for Juan-Andres Leon, the curator of Stephen Hawking's office, is that surviving attenders of the conference on superspace and supergravity held in Cambridge more than 40 years ago swing by and explain what some of the sketches and comments mean. "We'll certainly try and extract their interpretations," Leon said. Joining the blackboard in a temporary display called Stephen Hawking at Work is a rare copy of the physicist's 1966 PhD thesis, his wheelchair, a formal bet that information swallowed by a black hole is lost for ever, and a host of celebrity memorabilia, including a personalised jacket given to him by the creators of the Simpsons for his many appearances on the show.
The hope for Juan-Andres Leon, the curator of Stephen Hawking's office, is that surviving attenders of the conference on superspace and supergravity held in Cambridge more than 40 years ago swing by and explain what some of the sketches and comments mean. "We'll certainly try and extract their interpretations," Leon said. Joining the blackboard in a temporary display called Stephen Hawking at Work is a rare copy of the physicist's 1966 PhD thesis, his wheelchair, a formal bet that information swallowed by a black hole is lost for ever, and a host of celebrity memorabilia, including a personalised jacket given to him by the creators of the Simpsons for his many appearances on the show.
If you solve all the equations, the answer is 42 (Score:3)
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Was he a mouse?
Re:If you solve all the equations, the answer is 4 (Score:4, Insightful)
High Resolution images needed! (Score:1)
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..I was disappointed that I couldn't find high rez photos of the blackboard contents on the web. Would love to be able to look at it and wonder what it means, myself. Would be a great project.
Agreed. It's quite annoying to clickbait with "mysteries of the unsolved blackboard", and then provide a damn thumbnail.
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Thank to you for saving the rest of us from clicking, at least.
Who wrote it? (Score:1)
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That's Andy Kaufman level genius if he did it. Maybe they're both sitting in a bar somewhere yucking it up that us idiots all believed them.
Re:Who wrote it? (Score:4, Insightful)
The photo in TFA shows Hawking already in a wheelchair. So it's conceivable that while he can still write and manually control his electric wheelchair, it's unlikely that he scribbled on the blackboard himself, which would require a transforming [wikipedia.org] wheelchair. So the key to decipher the contents may be to "contact trace" those who attended the 1980 conference. I presume that the scribbles or doodles were done by some of the participants or by an assistant at Hawking's instruction or instigation.
I don't think the implication is supposed to be that Hawking either wrote or dictated the contents of the blackboard, nor that it creates some great physics revelations ("unsolved" is a bit of colour from the caption writer).
Rather, what seems to have happened is he arranged the conference and participants at the conference doodled on it in their spare time. Drop by any math/science related graduate student lounge and you're likely to see something similar. People drop by, work on a problem or just make a fun doodle, then wander off again.
What makes this particular blackboard interesting is:
a) It belonged to Stephen Hawking and he apparently treasured it enough to keep it for almost 40 years. I find something that had great emotional significance to one of the most famous modern physicists to be moving.
b) It provides some insight into the personality of Hawkings and the culture of physics, important to the general public.
c) It's a snapshot of an experience that was supposed to be very transient from that conference 40 years ago. There's something fundamentally cool about being able to share an experience with the past like that.
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Maybe it was his blackboard before he was wheelchair bound. And then once bound, well, he had his students go and write on the board for him. And over time, he used it less and less and kept more in his head because he didn't need to see it to work it out anymore.
He probably kept it as a memory of what his life was like when he could use it, or when he needed to use it and he forbade anyone from erasing it.
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FFS, you don't even have to RTFA, you can just RTFS.
The chalkboard is from when he a conference in 1980. Random attendees doodled on his blackboard. Hawking decided to preserve it because he liked it.
Not the first time itâ(TM)s put on an exhibit (Score:3, Informative)