[HAWKING, Stephen – his copy], NOVIKOV, Igor, Black Holes and the Universe (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge), 1995

172 x 120mm; pp. viii, [2], 176

Near fine condition; card covers clean and crisp; rear top outer corner a little bumped; internally fine

Inscribed by Novikov ‘To S. Hawking from Igor Novikov’ and dated 2 June 2000. A wonderful association. Novikov is sometimes called ‘the Russian Stephen Hawking’, owing to his long interest in Black Holes, and in particular his formulation in 1964 of the idea of a ‘White Hole’.

Like Hawking, Novikov also has an interest in time travel. In the 1980s he developed the ‘Novikov self-consistency principle’, in which the probability of any event that causes a ‘change’ in the physical state of the past is zero.

This book was part of Hawking’s personal collection, kept at his house on Wordsworth Grove, Cambridge.