Celebrated physicist Stephen Hawking is looking forward to this summer in Ontario but doesn’t intend to immigrate to Canada, his spokesman said Wednesday.

“It’s definitely not true. It’s absurd,” Sam Blackburn told the Star from Cambridge University, where he works with the best-selling author of A Brief History of Time.

Blackburn also said he “hasn’t noticed Stephen saying anything about” cuts to university budgets and their impact on scientific research.

Britain’s Daily Mail on Tuesday reported that Hawking intended to leave Cambridge University after nearly 50 years and “move to Canada in protest over government cuts.”

“It is ironic,” the Mail noted, that Hawking “would leave Cambridge, which has arguably done more to advance the understanding of science than any university in the world,” citing Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton.

Hawking does intend, as announced last week, to spent two months this summer at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ont.

“If all goes according to plan, this could be an annual trip,” Blackburn said, reinforcing a regular summer visit that Perimeter and Hawking had also announced earlier. The famed physicist was supposed to visit Waterloo last summer but the trip was cancelled because of his health.

“His health is pretty much fine” now, said Blackburn. While he wasn’t seriously ill last summer, “his doctors are extremely cautious” about Hawking’s travels because he is almost entirely paralyzed by a motor-neuron disease.

Perimeter was created in 1999 by Research in Motion co-founder Mike Lazaridis and is supported by millions from Lazardis, fellow co-founder Jim Balsillie and other private donors, as well as federal, provincial and city money.

Its current director is Dr. Neil Turok, a former Cambridge colleague of Hawking’s. When Hawking accepted its Distinguished Research Chair in November 2008, Hawking said, “The Institute’s twin focus, on quantum theory and gravity, is very close to my heart. I look forward to building a growing partnership.”

Turok called Hawking’s appointment “a new phase in our recruitment that will see leading scientists from around the world establish a second ‘research home’ at Perimeter Institute.”