A landmark portrait and a cosmos-shattering book

Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time. London: Transworld Publishers Ltd., 1988.

8vo.; blue publisher’s cloth stamped in gilt along spine. Photographic dust jacket by David Gamble; light edgewear. 

First UK edition. Signed by Chris Cates on the front endpaper. Inscribed to Chris Cates by “Mom & Dad” on front free endpaper: “Chris – / S + P Program. Summer ‘88, Cal Tech. / Love, / Mom & Dad.” Inscribed on the front matter and half-title by David Gamble: “To: Chris    From: David Gamble / In Dec 1987 on assignment from Time Mag N.Y.C. I photographed Prof Stephen Hawking in his laboratory at King’s College, Cambridge, UK. / I photographed him using a 4 x 5 Wooden Plate Camera & Kodak film. / A few weeks later Stephen asked me if he could use my photo for his Book jacket. The first UK Edition being 14,500 books. / As far as I know it sold 26 million making my image of him the most famous worldwide! / The portrait won a World Press Award and was acquired for the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery London. [page break] “Freedom is just another word” / I had finished photographing and packing up my camera and lights. Stephen due to his illness had very little physical movement left. His flaccid muscles had virtually left him. Somehow he found a brief smile for my picture. / He was unable to swallow food. But his eyes were still thankfully working. / The only other control, was a ability to move a finger to click a pad for his computer fitted to his wheelchair. / I noticed that his assistant was proceeding to connect the wheelchair computer to his large Main Frame [page break] centered in the middle of the room, via a 15 foot rather heavy cable. / Having recently returned from photographing in N.Y.C. I bought the latest Radio Flash Trigger. To stop myself and others tripping on the long sync cable. I could now attach the Radio Sender to the Camera Lens, and the Reciever to a Flashlight. It had a range of 400 ft. I could place the camera anywhere. It struck me that it may work for Stephen too. His assistant amazing [sic] added the Sender unit to the wheelchair computer and Receiver to the Main Frame computer. / Stephen at first started to click and it worked. His electric wheelchair moving around the main frame, clicking he started moving faster and faster clicking! Lap after lap after lap! He loved his new Freedom! / I gave him my new $500 device. It was fun. My only thought! Why didn’t he think of this! / [signature]”.

Held with: 

Gamble, David. Portrait of Stephen Hawking. 1988.

Chromogen aluminum print. 7” x 9”; mounted in 8 ½” x 10 ½” black aluminum frame. 

In 1982, Hawking decided to put his years of groundbreaking research in theoretical physics into book form. His goal, he said, was to “explain how far we had come in our understanding of the universe,” and how humankind might be close to finding a unified theory of the cosmos.It would not be a dry, technical work designed for experts. Hawking wanted readers. He contacted a literary agent and said he hoped to write “the sort of book that would sell in airport bookstores,” as he recalled in the Wall Street Journal in 2013. Several years and many rewrites later, Hawking’s A Brief History of Time defied all those expectations. The first run sold out in the United States in a matter of days, and soon the 200-some-page account of the origin and fate of the universe was flying off the shelves worldwide. It spent 147 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and a record-breaking 237 weeks on the Times of London bestseller list.

This first British edition and true first of Stephen Hawking’s groundbreaking book was illustrated by Ron Miller, with an introduction by Carl Sagan. Writing in the New York Review of Books, the science writer and mathematician Martin Gardner called it “a landmark volume in science writing by one of the great minds of our time [that] explores such profound questions as: How did the universe begin—and what made its start possible? Does time always flow forward? Is the universe unending—or are there boundaries? [Hawking] can explain the complexities of cosmological physics with an engaging combination of clarity and wit. . . . His is a brain of extraordinary power” [“The Ultimate Turtle,” June 16, 1988].

In his introduction, Sagan recounts first encountering Hawking at a scientific conference in London in 1974. Between sessions, he wandered into a different room, where a larger meeting was taking place: “I realized that I was watching an ancient ceremony: the investiture of new fellows into the Royal Society, one of the most ancient scholarly organizations on the planet. In the front row, a young man in a wheelchair was, very slowly, signing his name in a book that bore on its earliest pages the signature of

Isaac Newton . . .  Stephen Hawking was a legend even then.” Sagan goes on to add that Hawking is the “worthy successor” to Newton [an engraving of whom appears in the photo] and Paul Dirac, also both former Lucasian Professors of Mathematics. 

The true rarity of this book lies within the inscriptions on the front matter and half-title by David Gamble, the acclaimed photographer whose image graces the cover of A Brief History. Gamble’s vivid recounting of his 1987 assignment for Time offers an intimate glimpse into the day he photographed Professor Stephen Hawking at King’s College, Cambridge. His Portrait of Stephen Hawking (1988)  has become an iconic image recognized worldwide, garnering a World Press Award and inclusion in the National Portrait Gallery in London, where it has been part of several special exhibitions. 

This unique artist’s proof print, which is directly on aluminum, was developed through the chromogenic printing process, made by bonding the image to aluminum with a combination of 147° F heat and 60 psi of pressure, a method reminiscent of stove enameling. This technique not only creates a visually stunning result but also makes the artwork highly resistant to UV light and moisture. Its archival qualities make it ideal for museum-quality prints, providing a long-lasting alternative to traditional inkjet prints on canvas. 

In his fanciful and captivating inscription to Chris Cates, a Caltech student and the original owner of this copy, Gamble describes how, during the session, he introduced Hawking to a Radio Flash Trigger—a cutting-edge device at the time. The device allowed Hawking, who had minimal physical movement, to control his electric wheelchair with newfound ease, giving him a rare sense of “freedom” as he maneuvered around the lab. Gamble gifted the device to Hawking, reflecting his joy in sharing such a profound moment of empowerment.