WE Pakistanis excel individually, but abroad. We fail collectively, at home. Our role models are either dead or live in self-exile.

The best among the best must be our first Nobel Laureate — Dr Abdus Salam. The son of a schoolteacher in Maghiana, a hamlet in Jhang district (Punjab), he won a scholarship to Government College, Lahore, at the precocious age of 14. He studied locally for another two years until he passed his FA exams, with unbeatably high marks.

His academic trajectory took him to Cambridge University and then into a higher empyrean when, in 1979, he won the Nobel Prize in physics. He placed its gold medal around the neck of his former teacher Anilendra Ganguly, the man who had inspired him to study mathematics. Dr Salam died in 1996, disillusioned and disappointed, a modern Socrates poisoned by the prejudice of his compatriots.

Other Pakistanis who have excelled are Dr Azra Raza, the famous Karachi-born oncologist who has made impressive strides in cancer research; Dr Salima Ikram, a leading Pakistan-born Egyptologist; and Dr Nergis Mavalvala, the renowned astrophysicist and currently dean, MIT’s School of Science.

Great minds testify to the capacity of the human brain.

Dr Azra Raza has........

© Dawn