Why aren’t there more Muslim Nobel laureates in science?

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From Dr Amir Faizal Abdul Manan

The scientific world is again abuzz, this time with the much anticipated 2023 Nobel Prize announcements. The winners for this year include Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman for critical discoveries that enabled the development of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines.

A virtue of modern science is that it is fast becoming a global endeavour, independent of race, religion and nationality. It is axiomatic, therefore, that most major modern scientific breakthroughs, regardless of the lineage of the discoverer, aim to serve humanity as a whole.

It is fairly reasonable to expect that, notionally, the Nobel Prize winners would, over time, be somewhat representative of the global demography. In reality, however, there can be external factors deeply-ingrained within a social, institutional or national ecosystem that stifles the scientific progress of one particular community more than others.

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