Punjabi University students remember scientists from undivided Punjab

Ravneet Singh

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Patiala, February 25

Punjabi University students studying theoretical physicists, biochemists and other scientists from undivided Punjab, who remained Fellow of the Royal Society of London, are taking part in the seven-day Science Week celebrations at the university. The university has published a number of articles in its editions of ‘Science Week Chronicle’.

In one of its editions of the “Science Week Chronicle”, the university mentioned that Pakistani scientist Abdus Salam won the Nobel Prize in 1979 for his work in particle physics that paved the way for the discovery of the Higgs Boson, popularly known as the ‘God Particle’. “He was the first Muslim to win the prestigious award in sciences”, it says. It adds that Salam, a Pakistani resident, insisted on meeting his Indian mathematics teacher Prof Anilendra Ganguly, who had taught him in the pre-Partition era. “Salam gave Prof Ganguly the credit for instilling in him an interest in mathematics which he believed had led him to become a scientist. He finally came to India… to pay respects to his guru”, it states.

Alok A Khorana, one of the columnists in the university’s publication, who is also the great- nephew of Nobel Prize winner Har Gobind Khorana, writes that Har Gobind, an Indian American biochemist who bagged the Nobel Prize for physiology, attended the Dayanand Anglo Vedic High School in Multan. He later sought admission to Panjab University in Lahore and completed Bachelor and Masters in science. He went to England on a studentship to study insecticides and fungicides and later worked in the field of genetics.

Alok writes that Har Gobind Khorana’s fame as an innovative scientist grew and many scientists started making summer trips to meet him in Vancouver where he had an independent job. He at the age of 46 years shared the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1968 with Marshall Nirenberg.”