A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME: From The Big Bang To Black Holes.

Advance copy of the first edition, first printing. Association copy. Sent on the author's request to his PhD Supervisor, Dr Dennis Sciama, a month before first publication. Original blue cloth with gilt titles to the spine, in dustwrapper. With 26 black and white scientific diagrams, graphs, and small illustrations throughout. With a letter from the publisher to Dr. Dennis W. Sciama loosely laid in. A better than very good copy, the binding square and firm, with a little bumping to the spine tips/ the cloth bright and fresh. The contents, with the ownership inscription of Sciama in black ink on the front free endpaper, are otherwise clean throughout. Complete with the lightly rubbed and creased dustwrapper which remains without fading, loss or tears. Not price-clipped (£14.95 net to the front flap).

The laid in letter on Bantam Press stationary is dated 13th May 1988 and reads "Dear Dr Sciama, / Professor Hawking asked me to send you the enclosed copy of / A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME which we are publishing on 16 June. / Yours sincerely, / [signed in purple ink] Jenny Wilford / Press and PR Manager". The recipient is English physicist Dr. Dennis W. Sciama (1926-1999), who, assigned as PhD supervisor to Stephen Hawking at the University of Cambridge in October 1962, was the first to suggest that he work on astrophysics, though much to Hawking's reluctance. "I didn't agree with many of his ideas, particularly on Mach's principle, the idea that objects owe their inertia to the influence of all the other matter in the universe, but that stimulated me to develop my own picture" (Hawking, 2013). A founding father of modern cosmology, Sciama played a pivotal role in keeping Hawking's academic career alive following his ALS diagnosis in 1963 and continuously encouraged his groundbreaking research into singularities and black holes. In addition to Hawking, he also supervised several other renowned physicists and astrophysicists in their doctoral research, including John D. Barrow, David Deutsch, and former Astronomer Royal Martin Rees. (Professor Stephen W. Hawking: My Brief History, 2013). A significant association copy of Professor Hawking's enormously influential bestseller, the first book to make quantum physics even vaguely accessible to the general reader. From the first edition of just a few thousand, the book has gone on to sell more than 25 million copies in 40 languages. Hawking was one of the greatest science minds in all of history, born on the 300th anniversary of Galileo's death, he died on the anniversary of Einstein's birthday, his ashes are interred at Westminster Abbey, next to Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.