After the death of Stephen William Hawking on March 14th, his coronation was done at ‘Westminster Abbey’ on June 15th. Westminster Abbey is one of the famous and religious gothic church, notable religious building and the traditional coronation and burial site for English and later British Monarchs. In recent decades, the coronations of famous scientists and other royal personalities are happening here. The ashes of Mr. Stephen Hawking’s were buried in between the graves of Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton great scientists.
More than a 1000 people attended this coronation event at this ancient church, from them Lord Martin Rees well known as English Astronomer, Kip Thorne who is one of the Nobel prize winners and also the collaborator for Professor Hawking gave their tributes. Jane, Hawking’s first wife, daughter Lucy and son Tim were among this crowd including scientists, school children, and some politicians namely Matt Hancock (U.K. Culture Secretary) and Jeremy Corbyn (Labour Party leader).
In this coronation service event, 1000 guests were common people (General Public) who were selected from a ballot box of 25000 applications. In these common guests group, some of them were popular TV personalities, they were Piers Morgan, David Williams, Musician Nile Rodgers and Professor Brian Cox.
Before this, a private funeral was held at Cambridge University where he spent most of his life, a lot of people, school children, and university students joined this funeral from the nearby streets and schools.
The actor Benedict Cumberbatch who played Hawking’s role in BBC Drama’s television episode series also attended this coronation service with his wife Sophie Hunter. Benedict Clumber batch and Hawking’s daughter Lucy did the Biblical reading which is part of the coronation service. Followed by this, Astronaut Tim Peake read from “Queen Mab”.
To mark this occasion special, as a part of the event, Hawking’s words were beamed by a European Space Agency to the nearest Blackhole 1A 0620-00 which is more than 300 light years distant from earth. This was done through a big radio dish in Spain, where the Hawking’s words were set to a music by a popular Greek composer Vangelis.
Hawking’s ashes were buried in the abbey’s scientists corner where other scientists ashes were buried, the stone which was placed on the hawking’s grave was inscribed “Here lies what was mortal of Stephen Hawking” and one of his equation describing the entropy of a black hole. This is also near to the grave of Newton, one of the popular scientists in the 17th century and well known for his discoveries related to gravity.
Source of all images: Westminster@ Facebook
