Family, friends bid farewell to Stephen Hawking

Sand artist Sudarsan Patnaik putting the final touches to a sculpture in honour of British physicist and award-winning author Stephen Hawking at Puri beach in India on March 14. - AFP PHOTO / ASIT KUMAR

LONDON: Friends, family and colleagues of British scientist Stephen Hawking will gather Saturday to pay their respects at his private funeral in Cambridge, where he spent most of his extraordinary life.

Hawking, who died on March 14 at the age of 76, was famously an atheist but his children Lucy, Robert and Tim have chosen the town's university church, St Mary the Great, to say their farewell.