Physicist Hawking celebrates 60th birthday in style

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Stephen Hawking, the star physicist who has survived a remarkable 38 years with motor neuron disease, almost didn't make it to a week of festivities marking his 60th birthday.

"I had an argument with a wall a few days after Christmas and the wall won," he explained Friday to an audience of about 400 scientists and friends gathered for a day of lectures celebrating his contribution to theoretical physics and cosmology.

Hawking, who is paralyzed and speaks with the aid of a computer voice synthesizer, suffered a broken right femur when he was thrown from his motorized wheelchair last month. He had been speeding down a narrow lane in the city to meet his wife, Elaine.

Doctors inserted pins and a metal plate to stabilize the break and ease the pain, she said.

Opening his lecture, titled "60 Years in a Nutshell," -- an allusion to his best-selling book "The Universe in a Nutshell" -- Hawking told the audience: "It was nearly '59.97 Years in a Nutshell.'"

Hawking made it to the entire week of events laid on by Cambridge University.

"It has been a glorious time to be alive and doing research in theoretical physics," Hawking said in his lecture. "Our picture of the universe has changed a great deal in the last 40 years, and I am happy if I have made a small contribution."

"There's nothing like the eureka moment of discovering something that no one knew before," Hawking added. "I won't compare it to sex, but it lasts longer."

Hawking is best known for "Hawking's radiation" -- the theory that black holes are not really black but emit radiation and eventually evaporate and disappear.