Scholars pay farewell to Ahmed Zewail

Scores of citizens and students of Zewail City of Science and Technology held on Sunday a popular funeral for Egyptian chemist and Nobel laureate Ahmed Zewail, who died in the US on Tuesday at the age of 70.

Earlier in the day, a military funeral was held for Zewail at Field Marshal Tantawi mosque that was led by President Abdel Fattah El Sisi.

A host of university professors and representatives of different media outlets were present at the funeral.

Students wore T-shirts carrying the name of Zewail during the funeral.

In June 2013, Zewail announced he was suffering from a cancerous tumor in the spinal cord but later he announced that he was able to overcome the critical state of the disease.

Born on 26 February, 1946, Zewail got his bachelors and masters degrees from Alexandria University, before moving to the US to study and receive his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

He won the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1999 after demonstrating that it was possible with rapid laser technique to see how atoms in a molecule move during a chemical reaction down to tens of femtoseconds(fs). 

Source : MENA