Stephen Hawking Receives Copley Medal

smooth wombat writes "Stephen Hawking, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, has been awarded the Royal Society's 275th Copley medal for his contribution to cosmology and theoretical physics. Other notables to receive the award, established by Stephen Gray in 1731 'For his new Electrical Experiments', include Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur and Albert Einstein. In his remarks, Professor Hawking reiterated his previous comments that man must colonize other planets. The medal presented to Professor Hawking was sent into space onboard Space Shuttle Discovery and spent some time on the International Space Station in July of this year. Hawking has expressed an interest in going into space and commented, 'My next goal is to go into space, maybe Richard Branson will help me.'"

Comments

copley medal

[bl8n8r]

Hoo boy.. wait till the RIAA hears about it. Bet he gets sued for copleying stuff he didn't downleyload.

Space Colonies: A Waste of Resources?

[SuperMario666]

Professor Hawking reiterated his previous comments that man must colonize other planets.

Wouldn't it make more sense to spend the billions (trillions?) of dollars needed to put people on other planets on improving the lives of people on this particular planet? I'd rather have, say, clean drinking water for all of Africa than a permanent population of couple dozen shivering and calorie-starved Martians or Mooninites.

Re:I'm embarassed to ask, but--

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I was actually pretty surprised when I watched an old Star Trek NG episode the other day and there was Hawking playing poker with Data, Einstein and Newton on the holodeck. I'm not sure who, among today's physicists, will be remembered in 300 years time, but I'm pretty sure Hawking won't be among them. A few theorems about black holes doesn't count for much in the big scheme of things.