Credit:The telegraph via Wasim Sroya

Adbus Salam: written out of history by his own country

Professor Abdus Salam was one of Pakistan’s finest minds. His work in the field of theoretical physics, on unifying the electromagnetic and weak forces, earned him the country’s first – and only – Nobel prize for physics in 1979. He died in 1996 but his name has resurfaced in recent weeks, a reminder of his work in characterising the then hypothetical Higgs boson in the 1960s.

In any other country his incredible achievements would be celebrated. In Pakistan, however, his memory is shunned. His gravestone has been altered so that he is no longer described as a Muslim and his house, bought by the government, stands unmaintained and forgotten.

Even in 1989, the world’s first Muslim woman prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, who herself knew prejudice, refused to meet him, recalls nuclear physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy.
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