REFERENCE your editorial ‘Dr Salam honoured’ (Dec7) regarding the long overdue decision to honour the first Pakistani to win a Nobel Prize.

For the record : Pakistan did not entirely ignore the honour bestowed on Dr Salam in 1979. He was awarded with the high distinction of the Nishan-i-Imtiaz the same year, though he deserved the highest distinction Nishan-i-Pakistan.

Some reports claim that during the first tenure of Benazir Bhutto as prime minister, Dr Salam waited for two weeks in vain to meet her.

The exact period when he faced such discourtesy is not specified. During the tenure of the under-signed as minister of state for science and technology in BB’s first cabinet (after I moved from the ministry of information and broadcasting) the prime minister endorsed my proposal for an official visit by me as a cabinet member to Trieste, Italy, in May 1990 to pay respects on behalf of the government of Pakistan to Dr Salam.

He received me with great warmth at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics which he had founded after being discouraged — or prevented — from establishing a similar centre in Pakistan. Yet he graciously made no complaints about it.

Instead he stressed the urgent need to raise investment in education, with particular stress on science, presented me with a copy of his selected essays and speeches titled : Ideals and Realities, and hosted a very pleasant lunch leaving me with abiding memories of his extraordinary humility.

An essay in his book by Dan Behrman, originally published by Unesco, highlights the formidable efforts he made to make the Trieste Centre an apex of excellence.

One hopes the newly-renamed Centre in Islamabad will strive to move towards the ideals that Dr Abdus Salam so well personified.

Senator(r) Javed Jabbar

Karachi

Published in Dawn December 10th, 2016