Prof Hawking: ‘The world of science needs Africa’s brilliant talents’
By Sebastien Berger in Johannesburg
Stephen Hawking, the wheelchair-bound physicist, has launched a search for the “Einsteins of Africa” with a lecture in Cape Town.
Prof Hawking’s speech at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), titled Universe, marked the expansion of the postgraduate institution in an effort to accelerate Africa’s development.
Two Nobel physics laureates – a prize which still eludes the author of A Brief History of Time – along with the head of Nasa, also took part.
Prof Hawking, 66, said: “The world of science needs Africa’s brilliant talents, and I look forward to meeting prospective young Einsteins from Africa in the near future. If my visit helps to create opportunities for Africans to enter maths and science, I will be delighted.”AIMS was founded four years ago by Neil Turok, professor of mathematical physics at Cambridge university, and an education activist. The centre receives six applications for every place and 160 people have graduated from it so far.
From a reader: Dr. Hawking should be careful what he wishes for. As any Black Muslim will tell you, the last great black scientist was the evil Yakub, whose eugenic experiments 6,000 years ago on the island of Patmos ended in the disaster of the creation of white devils.