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Stephen Hawking

An English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, whose scientific books and public appearances have made him an academic celebrity

He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and in 2009 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.

Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for thirty years, taking up the post in 1979 and retiring on 1 October 2009. He is also a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and a Distinguished Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. He is known for his contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes. He has also achieved success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general; these include the runaway best seller A Brief History of Time, which stayed on the British Sunday Times bestsellers list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.

Hawking's key scientific works to date have included providing, with Roger Penrose, theorems regarding gravitational singularities in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes should emit radiation, which is today known as Hawking radiation (or sometimes as Bekenstein–Hawking radiation).

(Profile information sourced from Wikipedia and other publicly available internet sources.)

Stephen Hawking on the web

Website: hawking.org.uk
Wikipedia: Stephen Hawking

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SOS Children's Villages

Terrington House 13-15 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 1NL

p: 01223 365589

Email | Web

SOS Children's Villages

Organization

SOS Children

SOS Children is the world's largest orphan and abandoned children's charity. Our vision is "a loving home for every child" and we think our approach is the best for children and child sponsors alike. Child sponsors and donors worldwide provide a new family and home for more than 78,000 children in 500 unique Children's Villages in 124 countries. Our supporters also help a million children and their families through our programmes in the surrounding communities.

SOS Children: Offering real child sponsorship

We offer real child sponsorship, the way we think it should be done. Our sponsors and donors help children whose parents are not there for them. They may be AIDS orphans, street children, child soldiers or children orphaned by war, poverty or natural disasters. We give these children a mother and a family in a home within an SOS Children's Village. Donations pay to build the Villages and run them until child sponsors cover the running costs. Where family life is at risk (for example where parents in Africa have AIDS), we run programmes to help strengthen families and keep them together.

Although we are always trying to improve it, our working model is very simple. We take groups of seven to ten (less in the developed world) children alone and put them together with a permanent resident SOS mother to make a family for life. We group a dozen or so SOS families like this together in a Village and then work out from this centre to try to help the wider community with the facilities needed. If there is no adequate medical care, we provide it, if no school we build one, if there are families on the edge nearby (child headed families etc) we support them. Our strategic goal for the next eight years is to help a million child sponsors give a million children a family for life. Of these, one hundred thousand children will be given a new family and home in an SOS Children's Village. Nine hundred thousand children, who might otherwise be street children, will be able to grow up within their own (extended) family with our support.