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The wheelchair-bound scientist who died in
March aged 76 after a lifetime spent probing the origins of the
universe and mysteries of black holes, suffered from motor
neurone disease which forced him to use an electronic voice
synthesizer.
His ashes will be interred between major British scientific
figures Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin at the abbey, a
1,000-year-old location made famous worldwide for generations of
royal coronations, weddings and funerals.
Members of the public from over 100 countries, selected by a
ballot, will join friends and family for the service which will
include a reading from actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who played
Hawking in a 2004 BBC film.
The physicist's voice set to a piece by Greek electronic music
composer Vangelis will be broadcast by the European Space Agency
later on Friday.
The broadcast will be beamed towards the nearest black hole, 1A
0620-00, which lives in a binary system with a fairly ordinary
orange dwarf star, his daughter Lucy Hawking said in a
statement.
"It is a message of peace and hope, about unity and the need for
us to live together in harmony on this planet," she said.
Hawking will rest between Newton, who formulated the law of
universal gravitation and laid the foundations of modern
mathematics and Darwin, whose theory of evolution was one of the
most far-reaching scientific breakthroughs of all time.
Interment inside Westminster Abbey is a rarely bestowed honor.
The most recent burials of scientists there were those of Ernest
Rutherford, a pioneer of nuclear physics, in 1937, and of Joseph
John Thomson, who discovered electrons, in 1940.
Around 25,000 people applied to attend the Service of
Thanksgiving, according to the Hawking family.
(Editing by Stephen Addison)
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