The late Abdus Salam, Pakistan’s only Nobel laureate is no hero at home, where his name has been stricken from school textbooks
The pioneering work of Abdus Salam, Pakistan’s only Nobel laureate, helped lead to the apparent discovery of the subatomic “God's particle”, last week. But the late physicist is no hero at home, where his name has been stricken off from school textbooks.
Praise within Pakistan for Salam, who also guided the early stages of the country’s nuclear programme, faded decades ago as Muslim fundamentalists gained power.
Salam, a child prodigy born in 1926 in what was to become Pakistan after the partition, won more than a dozen international prizes and honours. In 1979, he was co-winner of the Nobel Prize for his work on the Standard Model of particle physics, which theorises how fundamental forces govern the overall dynamics of the universe. He died in 1996.
Salam and Steven Weinberg, with whom he shared the Nobel Prize, independently predicted the existence of a subatomic particle now called the Higgs Boson, named after a British physicist who theorized that it endowed other particles with mass, said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani physicist who once worked with Salam. It is also known as the “God's particle” because its existence is vitally important toward understanding the early evolution of the universe.
“This would be a great vindication of Salam’s work and the Standard Model as a whole,” said Khurshid Hasanain, chairman of the physics department at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, Salam wielded significant influence in Pakistan as the chief scientific adviser to the president, helping to set up the country’s space agency and institute for nuclear science and technology. Salam also assisted in the early stages of Pakistan’s effort to build a nuclear bomb, which it eventually tested in 1998.
Salam resigned from his government post in protest following the 1974 constitutional amendment and eventually moved to Europe to pursue his work. In Italy, he created a center for theoretical physics to help physicists from the developing world.
Although Pakistan’s then-president, Gen. Zia ul-Haq, presented Salam with Pakistan’s highest civilian honor after he won the Nobel Prize, the general response in the country was muted. The physicist was celebrated more enthusiastically by other nations, including India.
Despite his achievements, Salam’s name appears in few textbooks and is rarely mentioned by Pakistani leaders or the media. Officials at Quaid-i-Azam University had to cancel plans for Salam to lecture about his Nobel-winning theory when Islamist student activists threatened to break the physicist’s legs, said his colleague Hoodbhoy.
“The way he has been treated is such a tragedy,” said Mr. Hoodbhoy. “He went from someone who was revered in Pakistan, a national celebrity, to someone who could not set foot in Pakistan. If he came, he would be insulted and could be hurt or even killed.”
Prof. Steven Weinberg (who shared the Nobel Prize with Prof. Salam) aptly said "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.".
There are as many 536 Quranic verses that proclaims torture to any one who is NOT a muslim . There as many in the Bible. Go figure religion :(
Yet another example of how religion poisons our world. While the
focus is on Islam here, we should not be too thrilled with what we
have in our own back yard. Hindu and Buddhist dogma are not too far.
Any cursory glance at our scriptures also betrays the backward,
fearful and misogynistic roots of these religions. As Hitchens might
say, what else might one expect from the mind of a bronze age man
who has no clue to the working of the cosmos; with no idea of the
progress in physics, chemistry and biology that was to come. All our
religions are simply the prevailing theories from a time when humans
were confused and fearful of the natural world around them.
Emancipate yourself from this bronze age thinking and you will find
a world more beautiful than the nonexistent heaven promised in
fictional accounts written few thousand years ago. Science,
literature and music: Now that is what I call the true roots of
civilization.
As no relegion says to hurt anyone. I think they didnt (fundamentalists) understand the pupose of the relegion.Instead they envisaged in a way what the relegion contradicts.
As Ralph Waldo Emmerson once said, intolerant minds are the blindest of all alleys. When one shuts one's mind close to the illuminating rays of Knowledge , which is Science, one becomes dogmatic and religious.
Religion is the anathema to knowledge, to human development, to the curiosity to know, and to being the master of one's destiny
Therefore all religions must be vanquished
Well! nice way of treating one of the few scientists your country has!
By the way, the Higgs boson isn't called the "God particle" because it is so
important. The science reporter who brought that phrase into coinage wanted to
call it that "goddamn particle" owing to its elusive nature but his editor objected to
such swearing and modified the term to the "God particle".
Technically, the Higgs boson is no more important than any other. Just because it's
the last one to be discovered, we have this extra hype. The same would have been
true for any other particle had it been the last to be discovered. We can expect
more of the same in the quest for the graviton - now that's going to be elusive.
[Religion and Physics (or for that matter sanity) do not mix well.]
Actually, physics mixes quite well with Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, but we're not allowed to say that anymore.
[Officials at Quaid-i-Azam University had to cancel plans for Salam to lecture about his Nobel-winning theory when Islamist student activists threatened to break the physicist’s legs...]
But these fundamentalists, are happy enough for the nuclear bomb his learning made possible. They want the technological fruits of freedom of thought -- without freedom of thought. The future belongs to them.
Religion and Physics (or for that matter sanity) do not mix well.
I strongly object to this news item and accuse The Hindu of spreading
lies and canard. Professor Abdus Salam is highly respected and regarded
in Pakistan's Academia. I did not expect such misreporting from a
Newspaper of The Hindu's caliber and reputation. It would be OK for
Times of India to publish such nonsense.
The article seems incomplete. The readers should know the fundamental reason why the islamists hated Dr Salam. and that reason is his relegious identity - he was an 'Ahmadi Muslim'.
The article also doesn't mention two very crutial events in the history of modern Pakistan - The anti-Ahmadi riots of 1952-53 orchestrated by the Islamists and the draconian law passed by Pakistan's parliament declaring Ahmadis to be non-muslims during (ironically) Zulfikar Bhutto's prime ministership.
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