Single featuring Stephen Hawking released

Stephen Hawking to his debut into the music business

by Tilly Wilding-Coulson

This article is 16 years old

Friday November 13 2009, 4:00am

This week, Third Man Records, released its newest project, single ‘A Glorious Dawn’, which features Professor Stephen Hawking, Fellow of Gonville and Caius College.

Third Man is the label of breakthrough acts The White Stripes, Whirlwind Heat and Jack White’s spin off venture, The Raconteurs.

The single is made up of excerpts from Carl Sagan’s award-winning 80s television show, ‘Cosmos: A Personal Voyage’, mixed with samples of Hawking’s synthetic speech and various instruments. It was created by composer John Boswell.

Sagan earned his worldwide fame through publication of popular science books in addition to the renowned television show.

The single is a tribute to Sagan, who died in 1996 at 62. November 9th would have been Sagan’s 75th birthday.

Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time, suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (a variant of motor neurone disease), and communicates by way of a speech synthesiser. He has been in the news most recently for stepping down from the position of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics.

The single’s accompanying video can be viewed on YouTube.

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