Saha Institute to take up boson naming case with CERN

Last Updated: Saturday, September 01, 2012, 19:03

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Tags: Saha Institute, CERN, Higgs boson

Saha Institute to take up boson naming case with CERN

Kolkata: The Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP) would take up with European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) chief Rolf-Dieter Heuer the case of sub-atomic particle boson, derived from an Indian scientist's name, being rendered in lower case.

Heuer, director-general of the Geneva-based institute, would be on a two-day visit here from Sep 3 to address an international science conference organised by the Centre for Natural Sciences and Philosophy and the Critical Issues Forum. On Sep 4, he would also deliver a lecture at the SINP.

The discovery of a new subatomic particle, possibly the Higgs boson, considered "a key to the cosmic riddle", in July had triggered celebrations among scientists across the world.

However, the Indian scientific community had expressed its displeasure at boson being spelt in lower case while Higgs (after British physicist Peter Higgs) is spelt in the upper case.

The word boson is derived from the surname of Satyendra Nath Bose, who did path-breaking work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s using mathematics to describe the behavioural pattern of bosons - one of the two families of fundamental particles that the universe is classified into.

SINP chief Milan Sanyal had then received a lot of telephone calls and emails, and promised to write to CERN.

"However, since Heuer would be on a visit to Kolkata, I thought it would be better to talk to him rather than sending a missive. He will also visit our institute. I shall take up the matter with him then," Sanyal told IANS.

SINP scientists had collaborated with CERN in the Higgs boson research. Members of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) research team at the SINP helped the CERN experiment with data analysis and by developing hardware for the experiment tunnel.

Five faculty members from the institute were part of the core CMS team, besides ten Ph.D students being part of the project.

IANS

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First Published: Saturday, September 01, 2012, 19:03

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vijay - hyd
oh come one, its THE Western world, and people and almost everybody are swayed by their color or race or whatever damn thing you call. In India we talk of one humanity, even though they talk of one humanity but slantly, the first peoples are whites and then comes everybody even Indians, Chinese, Japanese etc. This damn hitler and his failed policies created an entirely different meaning to science and development. This world or civilization is western and most of those, scientists or policy makers and majority of their population thinks and believes in the philosophy that they are slightly better off than all others inhabiting this world. Accept this, I lived in the western world many years and this is the hard reality. They never accept that an Indian too made substantial contribution to the higgs-boson particle research. When that news was broken, not a single newspaper ever mentioned about Indians contribution. Wake up buddies, as long as you never cross these indian shores, you will be living in the self-afflicted disease called `vasudaiva kutumbham`.