Why he never won the Nobel

Much of Hawking's work was in the field of cosmology, and his work was well regarded. There is no perfect proxy for scientific worth, but Hawking won the Albert Einstein award, the Wolf prize, the Copley medal, and the Fundamental Physics prize.

New Delhi, March 14: For legendary astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who redefined cosmology by proposing that black holes are mortal, the Nobel Prize for Physics remained elusive as his theory can not be observed or verified. Even though his theory is now firmly accepted in theoretical physics,

there was no way to verify if black holes are mortal, according to

Timothy Ferris, author of ‘ The Science of Liberty’. “Black holes are too long- lived to be observed today in their death throes,” Mr Ferris wrote in The National Geographic.

Hawking, known for his work on black holes and relativity, died peacefully in his home near Cambridge University in the UK at the age of 76.

He was regarded as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists since Albert Einstein.

“Hawking probably would have won the prize had nature provided observational confirmation. But that won’t happen for billions of years, not until the first star- size black holes start exploding,” according to Mr Ferris.

The Nobel Prize can not be awarded posthumously. It was in 1970, Hawking had an idea that filled him with what he later described as a “moment of ecstasy.” He thought that black holes, previously assumed to be more or less immortal, could instead slowly lose mass and eventually evaporate, exploding in a flash of gamma rays.

The eminent scientist’s black hole research is now firmly embedded in theoretical physics. It united relativity ( a classical theory, in which everything is smooth as silk) with quantum mechanics ( in which everything is grainy) and spurred progress in information theory.