Perimeter Institute lands Stephen Hawking

The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) has launched a new Distinguished Research Chair program and landed Dr Stephen Hawking as the inaugural chairholder. Under the arrangement, Hawking will become a regular visitor to the Waterloo ON-based institute, with his first extended stay scheduled for the summer of 2009. Hawking is the latest coup for the PI, which earlier this year attracted Dr Neil Turok — a Hawking protege and colleague at Cambridge Univ — as its executive director. At the time of his appointment, Turok expressed his dissatisfaction with the UK government's handling of physics research and expressed his desire to convince Hawking to spend up to three months annually at the PI (R$, June 5/08). Turok says he plans to establish up to 40 visiting chairs at the PI and make the institute a "second research home" for some of the world's leading scientists....