Egypt bids farewell to Nobel Laureate Ahmed Zewail

Cairo : Nobel prize-winning Egyptian-American chemist Ahmed Zewail was given a State funeral with military honours yesterday in Cairo attended by Egypt’s President and top officials.

Zewail, who served as a science and technology advisor to US President Barack Obama, died on Tuesday in the United States aged 70.

A naturalised US citizen, Zewail won the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1999 for his groundbreaking work in the study of chemical reactions in extremely short timescales.

Egypt organised two high-profile processions to bid Zewail farewell on Sunday before he was laid to rest.

President Abdel Fattah el Sisi, Al Azhar’s Grand Imam Ahmed Al Tayeb, Defence Minister Sedki Sobhi and Egyptian-British surgeon Sir Magdi Yacoub attended one procession at a military complex.

Live footage on state television showed the scientist’s coffin shrouded in an Egyptian flag and drawn by horses on a carriage flanked by men in military uniform.

The mourners marched inside the military complex in eastern Cairo to funeral music from a military band.

Mourners including Prime Minister Sherif Ismail, Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and the defence minister then presented their condolences to Zewail’s family.

The coffin was then transported by ambulance to the second procession from a university he founded at the Zewail City of Science and Technology.Zewail was later buried in a family plot inside an Islamic-style tomb which his spokesman, Sherif Fouad, said he had bought just six months ago “as if he knew his time was nearing its end”. 

Family members, friends, fans and journalists were present at the burial when the body wrapped in a white cloth was lowered into the tomb.

Zewail was among four Egyptians to win a Nobel prize and the country’s first scientist to do so.