Stephen Hawking considers move to Waterloo

The U.K. is facing the threat of one enormous brain drain, as physicist Stephen Hawking has reportedly warned that he may quit Cambridge University for the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ont.

At issue is the British government’s funding for the sciences, according to a report in the Daily Mail.

However, before anybody starts planning the parade route in from Pearson, this is not the first time Hawking has made come-hither looks at the Ontario think tank. In 2008, Hawking was rumoured to be headed to Canada over the same issue, but that job switch never materialized.

Instead, Hawking, author of the seminal Brief History of Time, took the post of Distinguished Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute. In that capacity, he was to visit Canada last summer, but illness prevented him. He has yet to step inside the Perimeter Institute.