Egyptian authorities held a military funeral on Sunday for Nobel Prize-winning chemist Ahmed Zewail, who died last week.
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The Nobel Prize victor passed away on Tuesday at the age of 70 after losing a long battle to cancer..
Zewail was born in the city of Damanhur, 160 km (100 miles) northwest of Cairo.
The funeral, broadcast live on television, was attended by president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as well as military leaders, public officials and Zewail’s family.
The funeral ceremony was largely attended by government officials including Al-Azhar Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayyib, Egypt’s Prime Minister Sherif Ismail, Defence Minister Sedki Sobhy, former interim president Adly Mansour and former prime minister Ibrahim Mahlab.
The coffin was then carried in an ambulance to a second procession from a university he founded at the Zewail City of Science and Technology before his expected burial in the family tomb nearby.
Zewail was awarded the Order of Légion d’Honneur in 2012, the highest French Order, by the President of France.
Zewail’s media representative Sherif Fouad said that Zewail City has chose to open a condolence book for Egyptians, fellow Arabs and foreign diplomatic mission starting Thursday in the Zewail City headquarters in 6 of October city.
Zewail was the only recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his pioneering developments in femtoscience, making possible observations of atoms in motion on the femtosecond time scale.
He later moved to the United States and earned his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Zewail’s spokesman said his death was caused by a “sudden virus”, and gave no further explanation for the fatal bout of illness.
In the eyes of the Egyptians, Zewail was not only a scientist, but also a public figure and a politician who always defended his homeland’s image overseas.
Zewail’s experiments led to the birth of the research area called femtochemistry, which enables us to understand why certain chemical reactions take place but not others, according to the Noble Prize Facebook page.
In 2014, Zewail published an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times after the ouster of Mohammed Morsi, urging the U.S. government to constructively engage with Egypt rather than threatening to cut off aid.
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Zewail was the first Egyptian and the first Arab to receive the Nobel Prize in a scientific field. In April 2009, Obama appointed Zewail to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and in November of that year he was named the first USA science envoy to the Middle East.
