Remains of Egyptian Nobel laureate Zewail arrive in Cairo ahead of funeral

The body of the late Egyptian chemist and Nobel laureate Ahmed Zewail has arrived in Cairo ahead of a planned military burial on Sunday.

The remains of the late chemist who died in the United States was accompanied home by his widow, Dema Faham.

According to Egyptian news portal Ahram, Zewail had expressed his wish to be buried in Egypt even though he held dual nationality.

Some government officials were at the Cairo International Airport to receive the remains of the decorated Egyptian.

Zewail who died at the age of 70 served as a member of Barack Obama’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology between 2009 and 2013 and was the United States’ science envoy to the Middle East.

He was also a recipient of Egypt’s highest state honours, the Order of the Grand Collar of the Nile, an honour which entitles him to the military funeral on Sunday.

Ahmed Zewail won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1999 for developing a revolutionary technique to observe the dance of molecules as they break apart and come together in chemical reactions.

He was the first Arab to win a Nobel prize in any of the sciences, an achievement he used to promote science education and research in Egypt and the Middle East.

Ahmed Zewail was born in Damanhur, Egypt on February 26, 1946. He had his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Alexandria University before going abroad to study for a doctorate degree.