Stephen Hawking's thesis and wheelchair fetch much more than expected at auction

LONDON – A wheelchair used by physicist Stephen Hawking $ 393,000, while a copy of his doctoral thesis fetched almost 585,000 pounds ($ 767,000), auctioneer Christie's said Thursday.

The motorized flesh, used by Amy, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig 's disease – raised 296,750 pounds in a Christie' s online auction. That's nearly 20 times more than the pre-sale estimate of up to 15,000 pounds.

Stephen Hawking Foundation and the Motor Neuron Disease Association.

Hawking's 1965 Cambridge University thesis, "Properties of Expanding Universes," sold for 584,750 pounds, more than three times its pre-sale estimate, in the online auction.

Hawking transformed our notion of space and time, and the nature of black holes – and did it all while confined to a wheelchair and deprived of speech. Born in the English university town of Oxford in 1942, and a less-than-stellar student at first, Hawking was just 21 when he was diagnosed with the degenerative nerve disease and told he had just a few years to live.

Hawking at the age of 76. He expanded scientific thinking about black holes and the origins of the universe. He became a celebrity in 1988 with the publication of his "A Brief History of Time" – one of the best-selling books about science of all time.

He went on to guest star on "The Simpsons." A Hawking items, while a collection of 296,750 pounds.

Hawking's daughter Lucy said the sale has "admirers of his work the chance to acquire a memento of our father's extraordinary life in the shape of a small selection of evocative and fascinating items."

Hawking's children hope to preserve their scientific archive for the nation. Christie's is handling the negotiations to hand over to British authorities in place of inheritance tax.