LONDON: One of the world’s most famous scientist Stephen Hawking has decided to to boycott the Israeli president’s conference and his decision has attracted tens of thousands.

The numbers on social media clearly show that the news has gone viral on Facebook with 100,000 shares with in hours.

According to the reports, Palestinian academics had requested him to boycott the upcoming conference and then he announced it.

Israel tried to hide this news by saying that he is not attending the conference because he had withdrawn on health grounds but they faced embarrassment when within a few hours when university corrected ans said that Hawking has not withdrawn himself, who later made it clear that if he had gone he would have used the occasion to criticize Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians.

Who Is Stephen Hawking?

Hawking is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of 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 between 1979 and 2009.

Hawking has achieved success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general; his A Brief History of Time stayed on the British Sunday Times best-sellers list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.

Hawking has a motor neuron disease related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a condition that has progressed over the years. He is almost entirely paralysed and communicates through a speech generating device. He married twice and has three children.