Hawking bust at cosmology centre

Artist Ian Walters created the work showing Prof Hawking, with his head leaning to the right, for the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology.

Prof Hawking was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 22.

Since 1979 he has held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, the same chair given to Isaac Newton in 1669.

Prof Hawking, who uses a computer and synthesiser to speak, is a bestselling author, mathematician, cosmologist and theoretical physicist.

He became famous in the non-science world with the publication of his book, A Brief History of Time, in the late 1980s.