Lack of evidence put Nobel hopes in black hole

WASHINGTON - Stephen Hawking won accolades from his peers for having one of the most brilliant minds in science, but he never got a Nobel Prize because no one has yet proven his ideas.

The Nobel committee looks for proof, not big ideas. Hawking was a deep thinker - a theorist - and his musings about black holes and cosmology have yet to get the lockdown evidence that accompanies the physics prizes, his fellow scientists said.

"The Nobel Prize is not given to the smartest person or even the one who makes the greatest contribution to science. It's given to discovery," said California Institute of Technology physicist Sean Carroll."Hawking's best theories have not yet been tested experimentally, which is why he hasn't won a prize."