Stephen Hawking, I dare say, the most renowned physicist alive and author of the best selling book “A Brief History of Time, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays” that brought physics close to the masses, is going to visit Israel in December.

In an initiative put together by the British Embassy, according to the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, Hawking is scheduled to meet with top Israeli scientists as well as Israeli youth interested in studying physics in an effort to encourage greater cooperation between Israelis and British scientists and researchers. Upon arrival, Hawking will also meet with the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Not to brag, but Israel is filled with nerds. Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation worldwide and that by a large margin- 109 papers per 10.000 people-, so the visit makes sense. There is plenty of ground for constructive exchanges and cooperation and as the paper mentioned one of Hawking’s goals will be to highlight Israel as a nation with great talent and experience in all fields of scientific research.

I think that Israeli scientists could not have asked for a better compliment than that. Having the best physicist of the late 20th century recognize Israel’s merit and excellence in sciences is one of the best, if not the best, token of appreciation of scientific work carried out in Israel.

Stephen Hawking and Israelis have another thing in common beyond love for science and that is faith and determination. Hawkins at the age of 21 was diagnosed with ALS and against all prognoses he has managed to overcome the problems that his disability have imposed on him and have a good family life and a career that has earned him the respect and admiration of the scientific community.

According to his personal website, “Stephen Hawking has worked on the basic laws that govern the universe. With Roger Penrose he showed that Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity implied space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes. These results indicated it was necessary to unify General Relativity with Quantum Theory, the other great Scientific development of the first half of the 20th Century. One consequence of such a unification that he discovered was that black holes should not be completely black, but should emit radiation and eventually evaporate and disappear. Another conjecture is that the universe has no edge or boundary in imaginary time. This would imply that the way the universe began was completely determined by the laws of science”.

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