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New watch contains pieces of Stephen Hawking's desk

Pricey timepieces celebrate the late physicist and best-selling author of A Brief History of Time.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
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Gael Cooper
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hawkingcambridge

Stephen Hawking, who died in 2018, is pictured with Isaac Newton's own annotated copy of Principia Mathematica.

 Graham CopeKoga/Cambridge University Library

Acclaimed British scientist and author Stephen Hawking died in 2018, but the man dubbed the pop-culture physicist is still remembered reverently by many. And now a part of Hawking's own desk is available in a limited-edition watch. A timepiece seems like a fitting way to remember the man who wrote the bestselling 1988 book A Brief History of Time.

On Monday, British watch company Bremont announced the Bremont Hawking Limited Edition collection.

"Bremont is very proud to have worked closely with the Hawking family to create something completely unique to commemorate the life of the remarkable Professor Stephen Hawking," the company said in a tweet.

The Bremont Hawking limited edition watch contains four wooden discs taken from Hawking's antique oak office desk, set into the back of the timepiece. Son Tim Hawking says on the watch company's site that the desk was a "most treasured possession" and that the family is happy its legacy will live on.

Other elements of the watch collection also honor Hawking. The watch's serial number is printed on paper from original copies of Hawking's seminal 1979 research paper, The Nuts and Bolts of Gravity. The watch also contains some meteorite, as well as an etching of the night stars as they appeared in Oxford, England, on Jan. 8, 1942, the place and date of Hawking's birth.

The number 88 is also celebrated in the watch's limited run, to mark the 1988 publication year of A Brief History of Time. Only 388 stainless steel and black dial watches will be made, 88 rose gold with black dial watches will be made, and 88 white gold with blue dial watches will be made.

But if you want to honor Hawking by wearing the watch, it'll cost you. The watches range in price from $9,995 (£7,541, AU $13,684) to $23,495 (£17,727 to AU $32,167). A portion of watch sales will be donated to the Stephen Hawking Foundation, which supports cosmological research as well as supports people with motor neurone disease, better known in the US as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease. Hawking lived with the disease since his college days, using a motorized wheelchair and speaking through a computer system operated with his cheek.