Today at the Royal Society in London, a panel including Prof. Hawking, Starmus founding director Prof. Garik Israelian, Dr. Brian May, Prof. Richard Dawkins, Alexei Leonov and Nobel Laureate Sir Harold Kroto announced a new award for artistic feats that communicate the world of science.

The Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication will be presented at the third Starmus festival, a project which brings together music and art with the world's most influential figures in astronomy.


Credit: Starmus

The Stephen Hawking Medals will award Science Communicator of the Year in three categories:

Scientific community
Artistic community
Film community

Hawking said, "When I wrote A Brief Theory Of Everything, I was told nobody would want to read a hardback book about physics. Luckily for me that turned out not to be true. The people wanted to know, they wanted to understand. Science communicators put science right at the heart of daily life. Bringing science to the people brings the people to science.

"This matters to me, to you, to the world."