Vatican astronomy official hails Stephan Hawking

The head of the Vatican’s astronomical observatory has hailed Stephen Hawking as a scientist who gave a “human face” to astronomy.

The world-famous British theoretical physicist passed away earlier today at the age of 76.

Observatory director the Rev. Guy Consolmagno says that the observatory mourned Hawking’s death. He called him a “scientist of admirable intuition, who knew even more extraordinarily to give a human face to cosmology and to astronomy.”

Hawking was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences since 1986.

Consolmagno, who like Pope Francis is a Jesuit, tells SIR, the news agency of the Italian Bishops Conference, that Hawking had studied at Cambridge with a priest who had worked at the Vatican observatory, and that the two scientists had remained good friends for life.

— AP