Professor Stephen Hawking has received a Pride of Britain Award for Lifetime Achievement in recognition of his accomplishments in the field of Physics in the face of a 50-year battle with motor neurone disease.

The famous physicist and Fellow at Gonville & Caius College is praised on the Award’s website for a career spent “grappling with the biggest questions facing humanity… while in the cruel grip of the most debilitating disease any of us could suffer.”

It also praises his “boundless passion and enthusiasm for the universe” and his ability to convey them “with wit, wisdom and humanity”, concluding: “His stellar career and full and happy life fifty years after his devastating diagnosis are the most potent symbols imaginable of the power of the human spirit.”

Hawking was presented with the Award by Prime Minister Theresa May, who described him as “an amazing man” and “one of the most inspirational scientists in the history of our time”.

Hawking used his acceptance speech to paint a picture of the future, which, he predicted, would benefit from “the development of robots [and] driverless cars” but be marred by “many challenges such as climate change and the effect that this will have on the world.”

However, he ended on an optimistic note, saying: “I am sure the next generation will rise to these challenges.”

Hawking has frequently voiced opinions on the promises and perils of technological innovation in the future, particularly regarding artificial intelligence (AI).

In October of this year, he opened the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, a multi-disciplinary institute at the University of Cambridge dedicated to the issue of AI. There he offered a similarly equivocal message, opining that AI would be “either the best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to humanity”.

He elaborated: “The potential benefits of creating intelligence are huge. We cannot predict what we might achieve when our own minds are amplified by AI. Perhaps with the tools of this new technological revolution, we will be able to undo some of the damage done to the natural world by the last one – industrialisation. And surely we will aim to finally eradicate disease and poverty.”

In his words, the new institute will be “crucial to the future of our civilisation and our species”, adding that “we spend a great deal of time studying history, which, let’s face it, is mostly the history of stupidity. So it’s a welcome change that people are studying instead the future of intelligence.”

The Pride of Britain Awards ceremony did not miss out on a cheeky quip of its own, this time about Britain’s vote to withdraw from the European Union. Hawking told May, “I deal with tough mathematical questions every day, but please don’t ask me to help with Brexit.”

Hawking endorsed a vote to Remain in the EU, arguing that Brexit would be “a disaster for science”. He has since accepted the Leave vote, but maintained in a Guardian column that the outcome of the referendum was the result of the unequal distribution of national wealth.  

A spokesperson for the Department of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University told Varsity: “The Department is delighted that Professor Stephen Hawking has received the Pride of Britain Award for his lifetime achievements, not only as one of the world's most distinguished and famous scientists, but also for his inspirational battle against severe illness for more than 50 years.

“The tremendous relevance of Professor Hawking’s work has been highlighted again this year by the LIGO discovery of gravitational waves from merging black holes, confirming a number of his theoretical predictions”