Tuesday, July 10, 2012

India: Enough about Higgs, let’s discuss the boson

NEW DELHI (AP) — While much of the world was celebrating the international cooperation that led to last week's breakthrough in identifying the existence of the Higgs boson particle, many in India were smarting over what they saw as a slight against one of their greatest scientists.

Media covering the story gave lots of credit to British physicist Peter Higgs for theorizing the elusive subatomic "God particle," but little was said about Satyendranath Bose, the Indian after whom the boson is named.

Despite the fact that Bose had little direct involvement in theorizing the Higgs boson itself, in India the lack of attention given to one of their own was seen as an insult too big to ignore.

"He is a forgotten hero," the government lamented in a lengthy statement, noting that Bose was never awarded a Nobel Prize though "at least 10 scientists have been awarded the Nobel" in the same field.

The annoyance marks yet another case in the ever-growing list of perceived global snubs Indians feel they suffer, from the U.S. airport searches of Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan to the naming of a superbug after New Delhi, where it was found.

"Indians are touchy about this. All post-colonial societies are touchy about this," said political psychologist Ashis Nandy of the Delhi-based think tank Center for the Study of Developing Societies. "The sooner we get out of that, the better."

Full story on Yahoo.com

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