After receiving a glowing introduction, a standing ovation and a commemorative medal, the one thing super-cosmologist Stephen Hawking really wanted last night was a copy of a video featuring clips of him on "The Simpsons," "Star Trek" and in a late-night comedy sketch with Jim Carrey and Conan O'Brien.
Hawking may be known for his extra-exceptional mind and diminished body, but if he hadn't dedicated his life to playing around with the notions that space-time began with a big bang and may end in black holes, or that Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity must be mixed with quantum physics to explain physical phenomena, he could have been a comedian.
He was laugh-out-loud funny and gracious at Lisner Auditorium as he received the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal from the Smithsonian Institution.
"I did not have a master plan," he told the full house of about 1,500. "I followed my nose."
His nose has helped him boldly go where no man has gone before.
For one thing, he has lived a lot longer than he thought he would. While in graduate school Hawking learned he had an incurable disease; he later discovered it was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
Now 63, he uses a wheelchair and can talk only through an elaborate speech synthesizer. Under the spotlight at center stage, he looked like he was collapsing in on himself, a human question mark. His minimalist body supports a maximum-force brain. He has become a household name and popular author; one of his books, "A Brief History of Time," stayed on bestseller lists for years.
It's a fitting name: Hawking. He's hawking revolutionary ideas, and folks hung on his few words last night as if he were Yoda or the Buddha. He exuded light.
Because of Hawking's disability, his salient ideas were introduced by one of his collaborators, James B. Hartle, a physics professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Hartle, a pleasant man in a gray suit, ended many of his sentences on an upbeat note. In less than an hour, he gave the room a coherent and entertaining crash course in astrophysics and quantum theory.
"We live on a minor planet, circling a garden-variety star," he said. He then pointed out that ours is a universe of galaxies: billions of galaxies aswirl with billions of stars, and the deep, vast cosmos looks pretty much the same wherever you turn.
"The universe is about as simple as it could possibly be," he said.
In the beginning all matter was extremely dense and extremely hot -- much like the standing-room-only auditorium. Then came the big bang.
Fourteen billion years later, Hartle and Hawking are trying to explain what happened. Hawking, Hartle said, "is almost always surprising."
The program was sponsored by the Smithsonian Associates, United Kingdom Science and Technology and the British Council USA. Mara Mayor of the Smithsonian said Hawking was being honored now because the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics has designated 2005 as the World Year of Physics.
Over the years, the bicentennial medal, created in 1965 on the 200th anniversary of James Smithson's birth, has been awarded to musicians (Rosemary Clooney and Artie Shaw), movie icons (Robert Redford, Helen Hayes and Steven Spielberg) and a mountain climber (Sir Edmund Hillary). The institution also metes out the medal to loyal employees, corporate executives and others "who have made distinguished contributions to the advancement of areas of interest to the Smithsonian."
Before Hawking was introduced, the Smithsonian showed a clever collection of clips -- from "The Simpsons" and other programs -- titled "Stephen Hawking's Alternate Universe." Hawking was introduced by the institution's David Evans, who called Hawking a "consummate scientist."
Flanked by Smithsonian muckety-mucks and his wife, Elaine, Hawking spoke through his vocal contraption in a strangely comforting voice. There were long pauses between the well-crafted sentences.
"It has been a glorious time to be alive," he said.
He grinned.
He ended his short speech by saying,"Thank you for this Valentine's present."
