Ian Walters was born in 1930 in Solihull, Great Britain. He studied at Birmingham School of Art and later, in the period 1957-1981, became a lecturer at Stourbridge College of Art and at Guildford School of Art. His work is permeated with socialist ideas. He made numerous public sculptures such as Memorial of International Brigade in Jubilee Gardens South Bank and Nelson Mandela sculpture in Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. His last public sculpture is the Stephen Hawking statue at the Centre for Cosmological Theory in Cambridge. He died in 2006.