Hawking statue unveiled


A statue of Stephen Hawking is being unveiled at the opening of Cambridge University's new Centre for Theoretical Cosmology.

Professor Hawking will attend the inauguration of the facility, which will focus on investigating theories about the formation and development of the universe.

The event coincides with the 25th anniversary of a landmark Cambridge conference which shaped the world's understanding of the universe.

The 'Very Early Universe' workshop organised by Professor Hawking at the University in 1982 revolutionised thinking about the big bang, fourteen billion years ago.

The Statue, by the late artist Ian Walters, is the last public work by the artist who famously produced the nine foot image of Nelson Mandela that stands in Parliament Square.

Despite suffering from debilitating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Hawking has become one of the world's greatest experts on gravity and black holes, places where matter is compressed to the point where the normal laws of space and time break down.

Hawking linked gravity and quantum theory, and made the startling discovery that under certain conditions black holes can emit sub-atomic particles.

Until that point it had been assumed that absolutely nothing, not even light, could escape from a black hole. The particles emitted by an evaporating black hole became known as Hawking Radiation.

For someone for whom communication is so difficult - he can only speak via a speech synthesiser - Prof Hawking is a great believer in communicating science to the public.

In 1988 he wrote "A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes" which became a best-seller.
http://ukpress.google.com/article/AL...jLKyk967jS4QvQ