Trump's popularity inexplicable and Brexit spells disaster, says Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking has said that he fails to understand the popularity of Donald Trump, the presumptive US Republican presidential candidate.

ITV’s Good Morning Britain asked the man who has widened the world’s understanding of time, space, stars, galaxies and black holes if he could explain the popular appeal of the billionaire tycoon.

Hawking, perhaps the world’s most famous living scientist and the author of one of the world’s best-selling books, replied: “I can’t. He’s a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator.”

He also ventured once again into political issues, appealing to British voters to back the remain campaign in the EU referendum on 23 June – not just for economic and security reasons, but for the sake of science as well. In March, he pronounced the prospect of Brexit “a disaster” for science.

“Gone are the days when we could stand on our own, against the world,” he said on the television breakfast show. “We need to be part of a larger group of nations, both for our security and our trade. The possibility of our leaving the EU has already led to a sharp fall in the pound, because the markets judge that it will damage our economy.”

Hawking also addressed the biggest concern of many: immigration.

“There are two obvious reasons why we should stay in. The first is that it promotes the mobility of people. Students can come here from EU countries to study, and our students can go to other EU universities. More importantly, at the level of research, the exchange of people enables skills to transfer more quickly, and brings new people with different ideas, derived from their different backgrounds,” he said.

“The other reason is financial. The European Research Council has given large grants to UK institutions, either to foster or promote exchanges.”

The Cambridge scientist, like Isaac Newton 350 years ago, was once Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University. Hawking was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1963 and given two years to live. Instead he wrote A Brief History of Time and became one of the world’s bestselling authors, and one of the world’s most instantly recognised scientists: he has appeared in his wheelchair in both Star Trek and the Simpsons.

Because he communicates fairly slowly, using a computerised voice that pronounces words he must spell out using assistive technology, all his opinions must be counted as carefully considered.

And over the years, he has been unapologetically opinionated, not just on behalf of his fellow scientists, and on behalf of Britain’s disabled, but on wider matters: he joined an academic boycott in protest against Israeli treatment of Palestinians; he backed a recent $100m project to accelerate a tiny spacecraft to a fifth of the speed of light and send it to the nearest star system; he has spoken in favour of assisted suicide for the terminally ill; he has spoken up for atheism; he has made ominous pronouncements about artificial intelligence research; and he has even invited the fans of One Direction to imagine an alternative universe in which Zayn Malik was still with the band.

His latest return to referendum politics is less of a surprise: many of Britain’s most senior scientists have backed the remain campaign.

The exit enthusiasts however, are not swayed.

“The EU has been bad for science – increasing costs and bureaucracy. The clinical trials directive, for example, acted to double the cost of cancer research – as leading scientists and medical practitioners have acknowledged,” said the Vote Leave chief executive, Matthew Elliott.

“In the internet age, it is patently ridiculous to suggest that the referendum will have an impact on the exchange of information between scientists. And with our world class universities, the calibre of scientists wanting to study here is unlikely to do anything except grow.

“We give more money to the EU than we get back – meaning we could spend more on science if we vote to leave.”

• This article was corrected on 1 June 2016 to correctly refer to Professor Hawking as a former Lucasian professor of mathematics, rather than physics, as we mistakenly asserted.