Professor Stephen Hawking received thirteen honorary degrees. He was awarded CBE (1982), Companion of Honour (1989) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009). He was the recipient of many awards, medals and prizes, most notably the Fundamental Physics prize (2013), Copley Medal (2006) and the Wolf Foundation prize (1988). He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
Hawking received numerous awards and honours. Already early in the list, in 1974 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). At that time, his nomination read:
Hawking has made major contributions to the field of general relativity. These derive from a deep understanding of what is relevant to physics and astronomy, and especially from a mastery of wholly new mathematical techniques. Following the pioneering work of Penrose he established, partly alone and partly in collaboration with Penrose, a series of successively stronger theorems establishing the fundamental result that all realistic cosmological models must possess singularities. Using similar techniques, Hawking has proved the basic theorems on the laws governing black holes: that stationary solutions of Einstein’s equations with smooth event horizons must necessarily be axisymmetric; and that in the evolution and interaction of black holes, the total surface area of the event horizons must increase. In collaboration with G. Ellis, Hawking is the author of an impressive and original treatise on “Space-time in the Large”.
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Other important work by Hawking relates to the interpretation of cosmological observations and to the design of gravitational wave detectors.
Hawking received the 2015 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences shared with Viatcheslav Mukhanov for discovering that the galaxies were formed from quantum fluctuations in the early Universe. At the 2016 Pride of Britain Awards, Hawking received the lifetime achievement award “for his contribution to science and British culture”. After receiving the award from Prime Minister Theresa May, Hawking humorously requested that she not seek his help with Brexit.
Hawking received the 2015 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences shared with Viatcheslav Mukhanov for discovering that the galaxies were formed from quantum fluctuations in the early Universe. At the 2016 Pride of Britain Awards, Hawking received the lifetime achievement award “for his contribution to science and British culture”. After receiving the award from Prime Minister Theresa May, Hawking humorously requested that she not seek his help with Brexit.
Hawking was a member of the Advisory Board of the Starmus Festival, and had a major role in acknowledging and promoting science communication. The Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication is an annual award initiated in 2016 to honour members of the arts community for contributions that help build awareness of science. Recipients receive a medal bearing a portrait of Stephen Hawking by Alexei Leonov, and the other side represents an image of Leonov himself performing his famous space walk and the iconic “Red Special”, Brian May’s guitar.
The Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication was initially announced on December 16, 2015 at the Royal Society in London, by a panel including Professor Stephen Hawking, the Starmus founding director Professor Garik Israelian, Dr. Brian May, Professor Richard Dawkins, Alexei Leonov and Nobel Laureate Sir Harold Kroto.
The Stephen Hawking Medals will award Science Communicator of the Year in three categories:
Scientific community
Artistic community
Film community
The first Stephen Hawking Medals for Science Communication was awarded at the third Starmus Festival in June 2016. It was presented by Stephen Hawking himself.
Professor Hawking said of the award:
“By engaging with everyone from school children to politicians to pensioners, science communicators put science right at the heart of daily life. Bringing science to the people brings people into science. This matters to me, to you, to the world as a whole.”
Stephen Hawking 