Hawking's Quest to Find Africa's Einsteins

Dr. Hawking, I presume? In Africa for the very first time, the luminescent explorer of heavenly cosmos is seeking heirs to Albert Einstein, specifically in Africa, as part of the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences. In 2003, the first center opened, but more than a dozen are on the drawing board to build a pipeline of young people gravitating to the sciences. That makes one grin as Einstein himself often went to far better mathematicians to check his work. Einstein's gift was the ability to make the complex known while envisioning hows on the grand scale and unknown whats.

No one has yet come up with a workable grand unified theory to wed Planck's quantum mechanics of the minuscule with Einstein's General Theory of Relativity encompassing the universal XXX-large. Dr. Stephen Hawking is in Africa searching for the pre-schooler attending one of 15 proposed centers that could make her or his name just as universally famous by tying theories together in a working model explaining the universe, dark matter, black holes, missing bosons and dark energy. The African initiative enjoys a continuing partnership between Drs. Turok & Hawking. They were long time colleagues in England at Cambridge developing Hawking-Turok Instanton Theory - the universe orginated out of something rather than nothing - until Turok received the prestigious post leading Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

Gross was one of a group of eminent scientists - including the world's best-known living scientist, cosmologist Professor Stephen Hawking - who are here to promote the Aims initiative started by cosmologist and education activist Neil Turok, the son of Muizenberg ANC MP Professor Ben Turok.

Earlier this year, and partly in recognition of his Aims initiative, Turok was awarded a TED Prize of $100 000 (about R7,6-million) towards realising his "one wish to change the world". His wish was for the next Einstein to be an African.

In Cape Town, South Africa the lines were long to hear Nobel laureates lecture on physics and cosmology alongside the famed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics from Cambridge. Professor Stephen Hawking did not disappoint. One of Dr. Hawking's greatest joys was his ability to experience zero gravity or weightlessness, especially in light of his confinement to a wheelchair these many years from Lou Gehrig's disease while writing on the vagaries of space with great authority. His latest quest is to ensure the ability fir bright African children to have the resources to live their dreams in science and develop into premier scientists competing and testing theories on the universe as true equals with first class educations.

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."

The seminal book from the most amazing mind of Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time makes the world of big time physics accessible and intriguing to the masses. In a really cheeky twist the book also shows up briefly in the well done Harry Potter film, Prisoner of Azkaban after Harry gets off the Knight Bus. He and his daughter Jane co-wrote the children's book George’s Secret Key to the Universe.