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Late Egypt's Nobel laureate Zewail "returns home" for burial

Xinhua, August 6, 2016 Adjust font size:

The body of Egypt's Nobel laureate Ahmed Zewail arrived Saturday from the United States to Egypt and later will be buried after a military funeral scheduled for Sunday, Egyptian official MENA news agency reported.

Zewail died of illness Tuesday evening in the United States at the age of 70. The death report states that he died due to "failure in the respiratory system" that led to heart muscle pause and sharp drop in blood circulation.

Zewail revealed in a TV show in 2013 that he suffered some cancerous spinal tumor, but said he was then recovering and he passed the serious stage of the illness.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, who said following Zewail's death that Egypt lost "a loyal citizen and genius scientist who spared no effort to serve his country," will attend the prominent chemist's military funeral Sunday.

Born in 1946 in Beheira province northern the capital Cairo, Zewail later moved to the coastal city of Alexandria, where he got his bachelor degree in science and later his master's degree from Alexandria University. He then moved to the United States for completing his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania.

Being the first Arab scientist to win a Nobel Prize, Zewail used to work as director of the Physical Biology Center for Ultrafast Science and Technology at California Institute of Technology in the United States. Endit