The President of the BBVA Foundation visits Cambridge to present Stephen Hawking with the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences

Although Professor Hawking will participate via a live satellite link in the Frontiers Awards ceremony on June 21, he will be unable to attend the event in person. For this reason, and in view of his personal circumstances, the President of the BBVA Foundation visited him at his work center in the University of Cambridge to hand over the award.

“Professor Hawking represents the values of hard work, creativity, strength in the face of adversity and dedication to the advancement of knowledge. His research on the Universe and the formation of galaxies has reshaped cosmology,” remarked Francisco González. “It is for these achievements that an international jury granted him the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences, jointly with Professor Mukhanov.”

Hawking expressed his satisfaction at sharing the award with Mukhanov, adding that “this is the first recognition bestowed on me for my work on galaxy formation.”

During their encounter, the BBVA Foundation President inquired about Hawking’s views on the role of science and technology. “Scientific research is checked for consistency with experimental and observational data. And we need more intellectual rigor like this in public life to help us with global challenges,” the physicist replied. “There are big questions which must be answered and this will also need a new generation interested, engaged, and with an understanding of science. How will we feed an ever growing population, provide clean water, generate renewable energy and slow down global climate change? I hope that science and technology will provide the answers to these questions but it will take people, human beings with knowledge and understanding, to implement the solutions.”

The jury of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Basic Sciences category distinguished Stephen Hawking and Viatcheslav Mukhanov for discovering that galaxies were formed from quantum fluctuations in the Universe’s earliest days. At the start of the 1980s, Hawking and Mukhanov came to the same, independent conclusion: that quantum fluctuations in the newborn Universe, just fractions of a second into expansion, acted as seeds that would eventually grow into the galaxies. Against all expectations, since no one then believed it possible, the existence of these microscopic fluctuations was experimentally validated in the year 2013.

The presentation ceremony in the eighth edition of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards will take place on June 21 in the Madrid headquarters of the BBVA Foundation.