Friends, family and colleagues of Stephen Hawking gathered yesterday to pay their respects at his private funeral in Cambridge, where the British science great spent most of his extraordinary life.

Hawking, who died on March 14 at the age of 76, was famously an atheist but his children Lucy, Robert and Tim chose St Mary the Great, the church of Cambridge's prestigious university, to say their farewell.

Tributes poured in from around the world upon Hawking's death reflecting his huge impact as a physicist and an inspiration, in his refusal to give up in the face of his crippling motor neurone disease.

The funeral service -- being held a short distance from Gonville and Caius College where Hawking worked for more than 50 years -- was only open to around 500 guests who knew him.

A private reception was to follow at Trinity College.

A wider audience will attend a thanksgiving service at Westminster Abbey in London on June 15, when Hawking's remains will be buried near the grave of another legendary scientist, Isaac Newton.

Hawking defied predictions that he would only live for a few years, although his rare condition -- amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) -- gradually robbed him of mobility.

He was confined to a wheelchair, almost completely paralysed and unable to speak except through his trademark voice synthesiser.

But the illness did nothing to dull his mind, and Hawking became one of the world's best-known and most inspiring scientists, known for his brilliance and his wit.