Hawking to visit South Africa
8/5/2008 17:41
He's been described as science's first real rock star and the most famous
physicist never to win a Nobel Prize, he knows black holes and p-branes inside
out, and he's headed for South Africa.
Cambridge Professor Stephen Hawking,
author of the best-selling A Brief History of Time, is expected to arrive in
Cape Town this week to deliver a public lecture, his first on the African
continent, the South African Press Association reported.
Hawking, 66, who has
advanced motor neuron disease and is confined to a wheelchair, communicates via
a computer and a voice synthesizer.
The public lecture is on Sunday evening,
following the opening of a research center at the Muizenberg-based African
Institute for Mathematics and Science (AIMS), said the report.
During his
visit, Hawking will also attend the launch of the National Institute for
Theoretical Physics in Stellenbosch.
"Hawking is thought of as the greatest
mind in physics since Albert Einstein," AIMS Director Professor Fritz Hahne said
in a statement released yesterday.
"With similar interests -- discovering the
deepest workings of the universe -- he communicates mysterious matters not just
to other physicists but also to the general public.
"We are honored to host
and listen to the most famous living scientist on the planet."
Hawking holds
the Lucasian chair of mathematics at Cambridge, which was once occupied by Isaac
Newton.
He is known for his contributions to the understanding of quantum
theory, black holes and the Big Bang theory of the universe's origins.
He
detailed these in A Brief History of Time, which was published in 1988, and had
sold 9 million copies by 2002.
Xinhua
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