Khabar: 
Fearing the wrath of religious fundamentalists, Pakistan’s scientific community has been unable to properly acknowledge Nobel Prize winner Abdus Salam (1926-1996), whose theoretical work helped pave the way for the apparent discovery –announced earlier this month — of the Higgs boson.
![The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) recently announced the potential discovery of the Higgs boson. Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam did important work helping scientists reach the accomplishment, but he went unrecognised in his homeland in his lifetime. [Mal Fairclough/Reuters]](https://i0.wp.com/khabarsoutheastasia.com/shared/images/2012/07/26/120726_UDAYAN_IN_PAKBOSON-310_207.jpg?w=667)
The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) recently announced the potential discovery of the Higgs boson. Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam did important work helping scientists reach the accomplishment, but he went unrecognised in his homeland in his lifetime. [Mal Fairclough/Reuters]
![The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) recently announced the potential discovery of the Higgs boson. Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam did important work helping scientists reach the accomplishment, but he went unrecognised in his homeland in his lifetime. [Mal Fairclough/Reuters]](https://i0.wp.com/khabarsoutheastasia.com/shared/images/2012/07/26/120726_UDAYAN_IN_PAKBOSON.jpg)
“Our country is too caught up with sectarian and religious fundamentalism to celebrate something like this,” S.H. Rehman, a physicist with National University of Science and Technology, Pakistan’s premier government institution, told Khabar South Asia over email. “Dr Salam continues to enjoy wide respect in the scientific community where he belongs and that is all.”
Yet Salam deserves as much credit – if not more – than his Indian counterpartSatyendra Nath Bose, according to Rehman. “He was one of the five scientists who, working independently and sometimes jointly, discovered the boson which in 1964 took the name of British physicist Peter Higgs,” he said.
“It’s our national misfortune that we lost Dr Salam but it made no difference to either his career as a scientist or his patriotism for Pakistan.”
When the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced on July 4th that a particle consistent with the Higgs had been discovered, the Indian government responded with a press release highlighting the life and work of Bose, whose name is commemorated in the term “boson”.
The response in Lahore, by contrast, was silence.
Categories: Asia, Discrimination, Human Rights, Islam, Pakistan, Religion, Religion and Science