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‍　　He was a brilliant though by his own admission lazy physics student to the Oxford in the 1960s. “The course was ridiculously easy”, he said. But the career which followed like the stars he loved so much has shone brightly ever since. Despite being diagnosed with a rare form of Motor Neuron Disease when he was 21, and the physical deprivations it’s caused, his work on the laws which govern the universe have been groundbreaking.

　　It is of course Stephen Hawking, physicist, cosmologist and author of A Brief History of Time. Rather alarmingly, one observation he makes is that humanity is at risk from a series of dangers of its own making. In other words, our cleverness might be our downfall. BBC news online will be publishing the text of Professor Hawking’s lectures with accompanying notes from our science editor David Shukman. And David has this assessment of Professor Hawking’s standing in the scientific community.

　　Everything about him is distinctive. The terrible plight of a brilliant mind trapped in an increasingly disabled body. The slight smile. The plays on the face that can no longer move. The voice, delivered with an American accent, slowly and mechanically. It’s not always easy to hear, but it is immediately recognizable. Some years ago, before an interview in his office at Cambridge University, his staff had warned me not to make small talk because it takes him so long to compose his answers. But in the excitement of meeting him, I just blurted out “How are you” and had to wait guiltily for the reply.

　　Against all the odds, this remarkable figure has traveled the world, written bestselling books, appeared in comedy shows and acquired the status as a hugely popular science communicator. So when he speaks or gets his machine to, people listen. This year, he recorded two talks on the nature of black holes and the latest research into them. He also agreed to respond to prearranged questions.

　　He was asked about the fate of humanity. On a previous occasion, he’d said, artificial intelligence could wipe us out. This time, he singled out three scenarios, nuclear war, global warming and genetically engineered viruses, disasters that would be of our own making. And he said that further progress in science and technology would create new ways things can go wrong and that this becomes a near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years.

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