EUROPE

Celebrities with the funeral of Stephen Hawking to Cambridge

Hundreds of close relations, whose celebrities, and as many anonymities paid a vibrating tribute Saturday to Cambridge with the British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking.

Funerals proceeded in the intimacy in the church St Mary the Great of the university of Cambridge (is of England), within walking distance of Gonville and Caius College where he worked during more than 50 years to try to bore the mysteries of the universe.

Crowd applauded on arrival of the coffin carried by six members of the university of Cambridge and covered with lilies and pink white representing the universe and pole star. The bell of the church sounded 76 blows, for each one of its years of life.

The New Zealand mathematician Mike Meylan, who was in the public, has to underline “Stephen Hawking was a kind of emblematic figure for humanity. Its scientific achievements are incredible” just like “its capacity to communicate with the public”.

“The life and the work of our father meant so many things for so many people, believers like nonbelievers”, “at the same time inclusive and traditional, reflecting the scale and the diversity of its life”, explained his/her children Lucy, Robert and Tim before the funeral.

Among the parents, friends and colleagues invited to the ceremony appeared of many celebrities, of which the guitarist of Queen and astrophysicist Brian May and his wife the actress Anita Dobson, the British Lily Cole, graduate mannequin of Cambridge, and the producing one of cinema Barbara Broccoli.

The British astrophysicist Martin Rees and the actor Eddie Redmayne, awarded an oscar to have incarnated the famous scientist in the film “a marvellous history of time”, read a text during the service, while funeral praises were pronounced by his/her oldest son Robert and the professeure Fay Dowker, one of its old student. “Its influence and its heritage will live for always”, Mrs. Dowker in an extract of her intervention estimated.

After private funerals, a broader tribute will be paid to Stephen Hawking on June 15th, when his ashes are buried with the abbey from Westminster, in London, a homage booked to largest, at the sides of another giant of sciences, Isaac Newton.