To Uplift Science, Nepal Needs him who Published An Obituary in Nature (Journal)

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Recently, Prof. Dr. Utta Lal RajBhandary has published an obituary[1] of Har Gobind Khorana in Nature,  one of the most reputed and famous science journal. Har Gobind Khorana, Nobel Laureate, chemical biologist, was born in Raipur, Punjab, Pakistan (then India) passed away on 9th November 2011. He, along with Marshall Nirenberg, Heinrich J. Matthaei, and Robert W. Holley, had discovered sequences of RNA (UUU, UGA, AUG……codons) that code for amino acid synthesis and they received Nobel Prize in 1968. Prof. UL RajBhandary, Department of Biology, MIT, USA, has been in close association with him since 1962. Quoting HGK’s statement Prof. UL RajBhandary writes, “If you want to get far, you have to travel alone.” And understanding science and research needs very much enduring patient and deep study and sometimes makes isolated from normal social life.  In past post of this blog, I had mentioned the name Lujendra Ojha and Deepak Koirala, Nepali bright young scientists who had published their research article in reputed journal this year.


While I was in class 8-10, our science teacher always used to tell about Har Gobind Khorana, and his works. At the same time, in various newspapers, magazines particularly, Nava Yuva, I could see the name of Prof. Uttam L. RajBhandary, Prof. Dayananda Bajracharya, and other few names described as the successful Nepali scientist. USA, Russia, UK, Germany and France were frequently cited countries on those magazines but nowadays, Russia is rare in the journals, despite it still has been contributing significantly for science. Nava Yuva, and Yuvamanch were my favorite magazines and hardly had left any issue unread. Because, it always included at least one article related to science and technology.

On searching about RajBhandary UL, I have found as;
Citations: 9759; Cited Publications: 232; H-Index: 56 (Scholar google)
Times Cited: 7153; Results found: 169; H-Index: 46 (isiknowledge), 
Articles: 187 (pubmed).
These articles, where ULR is the author and all of them having impact factor above 5.0 including Nature Biotechnology (Impact factor is 31.1), Cell (Impact factor is 32.4), Nature (Impact factor is 36.1). This is a huge achievement and impressive figure, and probably it may be the highest for any Nepali and gives us a happiness. Almost all scientists will to publish their finding to any one of such prestigious journals.

Since past two centuries, Nepal has been always in Dark Age for modern science and technology and becoming in terrible condition day by day. In fact, it is situated almost in the bottom line in the list to practice modern science, although historic buildings, arts, etc. are still giving proof as Nepal was leader of ancient science and architecture. Such a high profile scientist like ULRB can contribute for the development for science and technology in Nepal with international collaboration. The equipment and funding, the biggest challenge for Nepal, are more important in addition to knowledge and hardworking, which we are doing (fruitlessly). Other panic part, we know our government neither knows the importance of science nor allow budget and even, I am doubtful, whether provide or not,  moral support to scientists by the government. Ministry of "science and technology" was established to make happy to some political leaders to include them in cabinet rather than to ease science and technology practitioner, what a shame for us. However, Happy New Year 2012, Adieu 2011.

1 RajBhandary, U. (2011). Har Gobind Khorana (1922–2011) Nature, 480 (7377), 322-322 DOI: 10.1038/480322a