Prime Minister Stephen Harper joins physicist Stephen Hawking at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ont., on Tuesday. Prime Minister Stephen Harper joins physicist Stephen Hawking at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ont., on Tuesday. (Mike Cassese/Reuters)

Famed physicist Stephen Hawking met with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Waterloo, Ont., on Tuesday.

Hawking — perhaps the most famous living scientist — listened as Harper announced a new post-doctoral scholarship program for Canada during a visit to the Perimeter Institute. The program, a followup on a commitment in the March federal budget, will award 70 fellowships a year and have a total value of $45 million over five years.

We must invest in the people and ideas that will produce tomorrow's breakthroughs," Harper said. "The Banting post-doctoral fellowships will give scholars in research institutions across the country the support they need to explore and develop their ideas to the fullest."

Hawking is conducting research at the institute for theoretical physics through July.

Speaking through electronic means, Hawking thanked Harper for the support for the sciences and said he was "delighted" with the scholarship program.

"By investing in young scientists, it is setting an example which other countries would do well to follow," Hawking said.

The institute, a public-private partnership in scientific research and educational outreach, receives funding from the Canadian and Ontario governments and individual donors.

Hawking retired from Cambridge University in England last year at age 67.

The $45 million for post-doctoral scholarships was allocated in the federal budget in March.

Harper thanked Hawking for coming to the institute and praised him as an "inspiration" to Canadian scientists.

Hawking was to have visited the southwestern Ontario institute last summer as a research chair but illness forced him to cancel.

Last October, the institute named a new wing at its facility in downtown Waterloo after Hawking.

Hawking's impact

Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 1963 at the age of 21, three years before he completed his PhD and began a distinguished career.

Here are a few of his career highlights:

1966: Publishes paper Singularities and the Geometry of Space-time, the first of several works where Hawking, along with mathematician Roger Penrose, showed Einstein's General Theory of Relativity implied space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes.

1974: In the journal Nature, Hawking's pivotal Black Hole Explosions? is published. Hawking makes the groundbreaking argument that black holes leak energy and eventually evaporate. This energy comes to be known as Hawking Radiation.

1979: Hawking is appointed to Cambridge's esteemed Lucasian professorship of mathematics — a post once held by Sir Isaac Newton. Also in 1979, Hawking publishes Superspace and Supergravity.

1989: The bestselling A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes is published. He later publishes The Universe in a Nutshell (2001) and A Briefer History of Time (2005).

2004: Hawking revises his Black Hole Explosions theory, suggesting black holes release information before evaporating.