The Dean of Westminster, John Hall accompanied by Hawking's first wife Jane Hawking and son and daughter Tim and Lucy Hawking, presides over the interment of the ashes
Tributes have been paid to renowned physicist Prof Stephen Hawking in a Westminster Abbey memorial service.

British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who played Hawking in a BBC drama, and astronaut Tim Peake were among those giving readings at the ceremony.

Prof Hawking died in March, aged 76, after a long battle with motor neurone disease.

His ashes are being buried alongside other great scientists like Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton. //

To mark the occasion, the European Space Agency beamed Prof Hawking's words towards the nearest black hole to Earth. The transmission, which was sent from a big radio dish in Spain, was backed by an original score from composer Vangelis. //

Stephen Hawking said that science would take us on a path to "the mind of God". By that he meant that we would know everything that God would know, with the caveat, "if there were a God, which there isn't. I'm an atheist."

On the face of it, the religious ceremony at Westminster Abbey was at odds with Prof Hawking's personal views. But hearing the choral works of Wagner, Mahler, Stravinsky, Elgar - and, of course, Holst's The Planets - filling the vast halls of the Gothic Abbey, one's mind was lifted beyond Earthly matters towards the ethereal. And that is what he did through his work - unravelling the mysteries of the Universe.