One of the leading theoretical physicists in Britain is to leave for Canada, having failed to receive funding for his plan to set up an institute in honour of Stephen Hawking, his friend and colleague. Neil Turok, professor of mathematical physics at Cambridge University, will now realise his ambition at the Perimeter Institute in Ontario.

Hawking, one of the world’s foremost scientists, is considering Turok’s invitation to join him there for 2-3 months a year. Other British physicists will be offered similar sabbaticals to engage in uninterrupted high-level research. Turok said many colleagues were “so ground down by bureaucracy, teaching and hunting for grants that it is increasingly hard to do good research”.

His decision to quit Britain reflected the Labour government’s failure to fund and manage science properly, he added. “Over the years it has become increasingly clear that British politicians understand very little of how science works and of its value for the country and its economy,” he said.

He cited Tony Blair’s decision to appoint Malcolm Wicks, a career politician with no scientific training, as science minister.

Wicks controversially merged the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council and the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils, which between them funded most of Britain’s physics research. The merger was already highly complex but it descended into chaos after Gordon Brown replaced Wicks with Ian Pearson, who also has no scientific background.

A series of elementary arithmetical errors generated a budget shortfall of £80m; earlier this year the Science and Technology Facilities Council, the body created by the merger, announced that at least 600 physicists would lose their jobs. It also warned that Britain would be pulling out of a number of global science partnerships. A government inquiry into the debacle is now under way.

“It is ludicrous that Britain’s participation in some of the greatest scientific projects of today such as the search for dark matter, the hunt for the elementary particles like the Higgs Boson and the first detection of gravity waves, is subjects to the whims of people with no special competence and little experience of these matters” said Turok, referring to three areas of high-level research. “ What it reflects is the failure of the political establishment to understand just how important science is for Britain’s future. Advanced research drives the quality of higher education, science and technology and generates invaluable spin-offs.”

Turok will leave Cambridge in the autumn to become director of the Perimeter Institute, a centre for theoretical physics founded seven years ago by Mike Lazaridis, creator of the BlackBerry hand-held device.

His departure marks the end of his hopes of creating a Hawking Institute in Cambridge. He had planned to expand the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, which he heads, and rename it after his colleague in the hope of creating a global centre for advanced physics in Britain. However, after several years of asking university authorities and research councils to part with £20m he has given up.

He contrasts such sums with the £75m poured into Perimeter by Lazaridis and his colleagues, and the further £50m invested by the Canadian government and the state of Ontario.

South Africa-born Turok studied at Cambridge and Imperial College, London, but his career has also taken him across the Atlantic several times before. He was professor of physics at Princeton when Cambridge lured him back 11 years ago.

His position at the centre of British and world cosmology arises from his pioneering work on the big bang, when the universe, matter and time itself are popularly believed to have burst into existence. He challenges that idea, suggesting that the big bang was simply one among many, perhaps millions, of similar events.

John Denham, secretary of state for innovation, universities and skills, said he did not accept that science had suffered under Labour. “Over the past 10 years government funding for science and research has doubled in real terms,” he said. “Currently, more than £500m of this funding is spent by research councils on physics research, all of which received budget increases.”

There are fears that Turok’s departure could be the first of many. Brian Cox, professor of particle physics at Manchester University, said: “Neil Turok is one of the world’s leading physicists and an inspirational figure in science worldwide. We cannot afford to lose him.”

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