Five hundred invited friends, colleagues and family are expected to attend Saturday's private service, followed by a private reception at Trinity College.
Eddie Redmayne will give a reading at Prof Hawking's funeral, with Ecclesiastes 3.1-11 as the chosen text:
"1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
The God-Given Task
9 What gain has the worker from his toil? 10 I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot bfind out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
This will be followed by a reading by the Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees and eulogies by Robert Hawking, Prof Hawking's eldest child, and Professor Fay Dowker, a former student of Prof Hawking.
The service will be officiated by the Reverend Dr Cally Hammond, Dean of Cambridge University's Gonville and Caius College, where Prof Hawking was a fellow for 52 years.
The bell of Great St Mary will toll 76 times, once for each year of Prof Hawking's life, when Prof Hawking's coffin arrives.
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