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In 1987 the westminster abbey, one of the main institutions of the United Kingdom, was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco. For centuries it has played a prominent role in British history, it has been the place of coronation for all the kings of England since 1066 and the scene of sixteen royal weddings. Its formal name is Collegiate Church of San Pedro and, unlike what happens with most English temples, it is the direct property of the monarch.
Within its walls rest the remains of one of the largest concentrations of sovereigns and geniuses in the world. There rest the remains of seventeen kings and characters of the intellectual height of Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, Francis Drake, William Shakespeare, Henry Purcell The Rudyard Kipling.
Although there are numerous tombs on the floor of the abbey, there is one that is forbidden to step on, it is located near the main entrance – at the west door – and it is the tomb of the unknown soldier. It belongs to an unidentified British soldier who died in the line of duty during the First World War.
From astronomers to geologists
But in addition to writers, sovereigns and soldiers there are men of science. The last scientist to be part of this select club was Stephen Hawking. His ashes were buried in the aisle of the abbey on June 15, 2018, very close to the tomb of Sir Isaac Newton.
Not far away is William Thomson (1824-1907), a scientist who stood out for his work in thermodynamics and electricity, and who is especially remembered for the development of the Kelvin temperature scale. Also in the central nave lie the remains of Charles Darwin, the author of ‘The Origin of Species’ (1859).
Within its walls there are inventors of the stature of John Harrison (1693-1776), an English watchmaker who has the cherished honor of being the first to put a highly accurate marine chronometer into operation. He was also a watchmaker George Graham (1673-1751), an inventor credited with several improvements to the grandfather clock and the creation of the first mercury pendulum.
Under the fantastic fan-shaped vault sleep eternal sleep such illustrious astronomers as William Herschel (1738-1822) and his son John FW Herschel (1792-1871), to whom we owe the terms ‘photography’, ‘negative’ and ‘positive’.
There are also doctors, like David Livingstone (1813-1873), although his heart is buried under an mpundu tree in the Republic of Zambia. The remains of this explorer lie a few meters from those of the British geologist Charles Lyell (1797-1875), one of the founders of modern Geology.
There are also Nobel Prizes
In the ‘great mathematicians’ section we have George Green (1793-1841) and Paul AM Dirac (1902-1984). The works of the former greatly influenced the development of important concepts in physics and were the final derivative of applications as significant as the theorem that bears his name. For his part, Dirac was a mathematician and theoretical physicist who contributed greatly to the development of quantum mechanics.
There are scientists who are Nobel Prize laureates, such as Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) and Joseph John Thomson (1856-1940). Lord Rutherford was a physicist who studied radioactive particles -which he classified as alpha, beta and gamma- and the creator of an atomic model with which he proved the existence of the anatomical nucleus. TO ‘JJ’ Thomson We owe the discovery of the electron and the first mass spectrometer.
To end our particular list, it should be noted that great engineers are also buried in the abbey, including Robert Stephenson (1803-1859), son of George Stephenson, the inventor who developed railways and locomotives, achievements that were achieved by the joint efforts of father and son. By his side is Thomas Telford (1757-1834), a civil engineer and builder of a large number of bridges, roads and canals, which is why his contemporaries nicknamed him the ‘colossus of highways’.
Pedro Gargantilla is an internist at El Escorial Hospital (Madrid) and the author of several popular books