Hawking helped elevate Canada’s science profile. More coverage,

PETER GOFFIN Scientists, educators and leaders across the country are paying tribute to Stephen Hawking, celebrating a man whose connections to Canada helped elevate the global profiles of national research institutes.

Hawking boosted Canada’s profile in the physics community in 2008 when he took on the title of distinguished research chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, which he visited in 2010 and 2012.

“Stephen’s life was heroic, in so many ways,” said Neil Turok, director of the institute and a friend of Hawking ’s who worked with him at Cambridge University.

Hawking had lauded the work of the Perimeter Institute, which now has a research building and a theoretical cosmology fellowship named after him.

“Perimeter is a grand experi- ment in theoretical physics and the institute’s twin focus, on quantum theory and gravity, is very close to my heart and central to explaining the origin of the universe,” Hawking said after his first trip to the facility.

Hawking shone a spotlight on the work of another Canadian research project when he featured the SNOLAB neutrino observatory in Sudbury, in his 2011 documentary miniseries, “Brave New World with Stephen Hawking.”

Hawking had visited SNOLAB, where researchers in underground facilities study subatomic particles, in 1998 and was fascinated by their work, staff recalled.

“It was obvious he completely understood everything because he asked the most relevant and interesting question in response to what I had described and I was very taken by that,” said Richard Ford, the director of program development at SNOLAB who had been a grad- uate student at the time of Hawking’s 1998 visit.

During his second visit to SNOLAB, in 2012, Hawking spoke of the need for physics to be accessible to ordinary people.

“I believe everyone can and should have a broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it,” he said at the time. “This is what I have tried to convey in my books.” Robert Brandenberger, a McGill University professor who did his post-doctoral work under Hawking’s supervision in the 1980s, described the famous physicist as optimistic and sociable.

Hawking had lost his voice by that point and was just beginning to use a computer-based communication system, Brandenberger recalled. In spite of those challenges, Hawking made sure he joined his students for afternoon tea each day, eager to hear about their academic and personal lives.