Nobel Laureate in Physics
(The only Pakistani to get the Nobel Prize)
Abdus Salam
was born in Jhang, a small town in what is now Pakistan, in 1926. His father was
an official in the Department of Education in a poor farming district. His
family has a long tradition of piety and learning.
When he cycled home from Lahore, at the age of 14, after gaining the highest
marks ever recorded for the Matriculation Examination at the University of the
Panjab, the whole town turned out to welcome him. He won a scholarship to
Government College, University of the Panjab, and took his MA in 1946. In the
same year he was awarded a scholarship to
St. John's College, Cambridge, where he took a BA (honours) with a double
First in mathematics and physics in 1949. In 1950 he received the Smith's Prize
from
Cambridge University for the most outstanding pre-doctoral contribution to
physics. He also obtained a PhD in theoretical physics at Cambridge; his thesis,
published in 1951, contained fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics which
had already gained him an international reputation.
Salam returned to Pakistan in 1951 to teach mathematics at
Government College, Lahore,
and in 1952 became head of the Mathematics Department of the Punjab University.
He had come back with the intention of founding a school of research, but it
soon became clear that this was impossible. To pursue a career of research in
theoretical physics he had no alternative at that time but to leave his own
country and work abroad. Many years later he succeeded in finding a way to solve
the heartbreaking dilemma faced by many young and gifted theoretical physicists
from developing countries. At the ICTP, Trieste, which he created, he instituted
the famous "Associateships" which allowed deserving young physicists to spend
their vacations there in an invigorating atmosphere, in close touch with their
peers in research and with the leaders in their own field, losing their sense of
isolation and returning to their own country for nine months of the academic
year refreshed and recharged.
In 1954 Salam left his native country for a lectureship at Cambridge, and since
then has visited Pakistan as adviser on science policy. His work for Pakistan
has, however, been far-reaching and influential. He was a member of the Pakistan
Atomic Energy Commission, a member of the Scientific Commission of Pakistan and
was Chief Scientific Adviser to the President from 1961 to 1974.
Since 1957 he has been Professor of
Theoretical Physics at Imperial College, London, and since 1964 has combined
this position with that of Director of the ICTP, Trieste.
For more than forty years he has been a prolific researcher in theoretical
elementary particle physics. He has either pioneered or been associated with all
the important developments in this field, maintaining a constant and fertile
flow of brilliant ideas. For the past thirty years he has used his academic
reputation to add weight to his active and influential participation in
international scientific affairs. He has served on a number of United Nations
committees concerned with the advancement of science and technology in
developing countries.
To accommodate the astonishing volume of activity that he undertakes, Professor
Salam cuts out such inessentials as holidays, parties and entertainments. Faced
with such an example, the staff of the Centre find it very difficult to complain
that they are overworked.
He has a way of keeping his administrative staff at the ICTP fully alive to the
real aim of the Centre - the fostering through training and research of the
advancement of theoretical physics, with special regard to the needs of
developing countries. Inspired by their personal regard for him and encouraged
by the fact that he works harder than any of them, the staff cheerfully submit
to working conditions that would be unthinkable here at the
International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna (IAEA). The money he received
from the Atoms for Peace Medal and Award he spent on setting up a fund for young
Pakistani physicists to visit the ICTP. He uses his share of the Nobel Prize
entirely for the benefit of physicists from developing countries and does not
spend a penny of it on himself or his family.
Professor
Salam is famous for that electroweak theory which is the mathematical and
conceptual synthesis of the electromagnetic and weak interactions - the latest
stage reached until now on the path towards the unification of the fundamental
forces of nature. With this motivation, Professor Salam received the Nobel Prize
for physics together with the Americans Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow in
1979. The validity of the theory was ascertained in the following years through
experiments carried out at the superprotosynchrotron facility at CERN in Geneva
which led to the discovery of the W and Z particles. Salam's electroweak theory
is still the core of the 'standard model' of high energy physics.
Abdus Salam is known to be a devout Muslim, whose religion does not occupy a
separate compartment of his life; it is inseparable from his work and family
life. He once wrote: "The Holy Quran enjoins us to reflect on the verities of
Allah's created laws of nature; however, that our generation has been privileged
to glimpse a part of His design is a bounty and a grace for which I render
thanks with a humble heart."