Where to See Stephen Hawking: Places & Memorials

From his grave in Westminster Abbey to his wheelchair in the Science Museum and his old haunts in Cambridge, a guide to the places connected to Stephen Hawking that you can visit.

For those who want to feel a little closer to Stephen Hawking, several places connected to his life and memory can be visited. Here is a short guide to the most significant.

Westminster Abbey, London

The most important site is Westminster Abbey, where Hawking's ashes were interred in June 2018. He lies in the most distinguished company in British science, near the grave of Isaac Newton and close to that of Charles Darwin. His memorial stone is inscribed with the equation for the temperature of a black hole, the Hawking radiation formula that was his greatest discovery, a fitting epitaph carved in physics. The Abbey is open to visitors, and the story of his interment is told on the page about his death and interment.

Cambridge

Cambridge was Hawking's home for most of his life. He worked at the University's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, latterly housed at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences, and he was a long-standing fellow of Gonville and Caius College, which is part of the historic university city well worth exploring. While his former office is not a public exhibit, the city itself, with its colleges and scientific heritage, is the landscape against which his life's work unfolded.

The Science Museum, London

In 2021 the contents of Hawking's Cambridge office were acquired for the nation, and the Science Museum in London became home to a remarkable collection of his personal effects, including one of his iconic wheelchairs and items relating to the speech synthesiser that gave him his voice. At the same time, his vast scientific archive of papers was secured by Cambridge University Library. Together they preserve both the instruments of his daily life and the record of his ideas. Check the museum's current displays before visiting, as exhibits change.

Elsewhere

Hawking was born in Oxford and grew up in St Albans, and both places carry associations with his early life covered in his biography. His name also lives on in buildings, lectures and a commemorative Royal Mint coin issued in 2019. But for most visitors, the Abbey and the Science Museum are the two places where his presence is most directly felt.