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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Famed physicist takes research post in Waterloo

By: Joseph Brean

Posted: 06/21/2010 7:11 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

British theoretical physicist Prof. Stephen Hawking in Waterloo, Ont., Sunday. (DAVE CHIDLEY / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

WATERLOO, Ont. -- Stephen Hawking, one of the world's most famous scientists, told a crowd Sunday that he expects "great things" as he accepted a new research position in Waterloo.

Hawking was hired by the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics from the University of Cambridge in England last year, following his retirement as Lucasian professor of mathematics.

On Sunday, Hawking told a crowd that included three federal cabinet ministers and the Ontario premier, that he hopes Waterloo will become an inspiring and free intellectual environment where top minds can pursue ambitious and timely research, leading to "magical progress."

"I am hoping and expecting great things will happen here," he said.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty introduced Hawking, comparing him to Newton and Galileo.

"You could say he is drawing a picture of God," he said.

Meanwhile, CEO of Waterloo-based Research In Motion Mike Lazaridis described the scientist as an "entrepreneur" in the tradition of Einstein, whose research unleashed a flood of "value creation."

Unable to move or speak due to the crippling effects of motor neurone disease, Hawking delivered his remarks using the talking computer designed for him by a Cambridge colleague.

In 1988, he and Roger Penrose won the prestigious Wolf Prize for Physics for, as the citation said, "their brilliant development of the theory of general relativity, in which they have shown the necessity for cosmological singularities and have elucidated the physics of black holes. In this work they have greatly enlarged our understanding of the origin and possible fate of the universe."

He told the audience on Sunday that he and Penrose focused on cosmology and quantum mechanics.

"It was a glorious feeling to have the field all to ourselves, how unlike particle physics where people were falling all over themselves trying to latch on to the latest idea. They still are," Hawking said.

Hawking has been in the news lately for arguing that mankind should not try to contact aliens because they are likely to be as dangerous to us as Europeans were to the indigenous peoples of pre-contact America, but he did not mention that on Sunday.

-- Canwest News Service

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 21, 2010 A9

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