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Abdus Salam (1926-1996)

Abdus Salam  (1926-1996)

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Birth date
29.01.1926
Death Date
21.11.1996
Age of Death
70
Birth Place
Jhang, Punjab, British India (present-day Punjab, Pakistan)
Death Place
Oxford, United Kingdom
Zodiac Sign
Aquarius
Fields of Expertise
Nuclear Physicist
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Scientific thought and its creation is the common and shared heritage of mankind.

Mohammad Abdus Salam was a Pakistani theoretical physicist. He shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg for his contribution to the electroweak unification theory. He was the first Pakistani to receive a Nobel Prize in science and the second from an Islamic country to receive any Nobel Prize (after Anwar Sadat of Egypt).

Salam was science advisor to the Ministry of Science and Technology in Pakistan from 1960 to 1974, a position from which he was supposed to play a major and influential role in the development of the country's science infrastructure. Salam contributed to developments in theoretical and particle physics. He was the founding director of the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO), and responsible for the establishment of the Theoretical Physics Group (TPG) in the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC). As Science Advisor, Salam played a role in Pakistan's development of the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and may have contributed as well, via Project-706, to development of the atomic bomb project of Pakistan in 1972; for this, he is viewed as the "scientific father" of this programme. In 1974, Abdus Salam departed from his country, in protest, after the Parliament of Pakistan passed unanimously a parliamentary bill declaring members of the Ahmadiyya movement, to which Salam belonged, non-Muslims. In 1998, following the country's Chagai-I nuclear tests, the Government of Pakistan issued a commemorative stamp, as a part of "Scientists of Pakistan", to honour the services of Salam.

Salam's notable achievements include the Pati–Salam model, magnetic photon, vector meson, Grand Unified Theory, work on supersymmetry and, most importantly, electroweak theory, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Salam made a major contribution in quantum field theory and in the advancement of Mathematics at Imperial College London. With his student, Riazuddin, Salam made important contributions to the modern theory on neutrinos, neutron stars and black holes, as well as the work on modernising the quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. As a teacher and science promoter, Salam is remembered as a founder and scientific father of mathematical and theoretical physics in Pakistan during his term as the chief scientific advisor to the president. Salam heavily contributed to the rise of Pakistani physics to the physics community in the world. Even until shortly before his death, Salam continued to contribute to physics, and to advocate for the development of science in Third-World countries.

Abdus Salam was born to Chaudhry Muhammad Hussain and Hajira Hussain, into a Punjabi Muslim family that was part of the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam. His grandfather, Gul Muhammad, was a religious scholar as well as a physician while his father was an education officer in the Department of Education of Punjab State in a poor farming district.

Salam very early established a reputation throughout the Punjab and later at the University of Cambridge for outstanding brilliance and academic achievement. At age 14, Salam scored the highest marks ever recorded for the matriculation examination at the Punjab University. He won a full scholarship to the Government College University of Lahore, Punjab State. Salam was a versatile scholar, interested in Urdu and English literature in which he excelled. But he soon picked up Mathematics as his concentration. Salam's mentor and tutors wanted him to become an English teacher, but Salam decided to stick with Mathematics As a fourth-year student there, he published his work on Srinivasa Ramanujan's problems in mathematics, and took his B.A. in Mathematics in 1944. His father wanted him to join the Indian Civil Service (ICS). In those days, the ICS was the highest aspiration for young university graduates and civil servants occupied a respected place in civil society. Respecting his father's wish, Salam tried for the Indian Railways but did not qualify for the service as he failed the medical optical tests because he had worn spectacles since an early age. The results further concluded that Salam failed a mechanical test required by railway engineers to gain a commission in the Railways, and moreover that he was too young to compete for the job. Therefore, the Railways rejected Salam's job application. While in Lahore, Salam went on to attend the graduate school of Government College University. He received his MA in Mathematics from the Government College University in 1946. That same year, he was awarded a scholarship to St John's College, Cambridge, where he completed a BA degree with Double First-Class Honours 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. After finishing his degrees, Fred Hoyle advised Salam to spend another year in the Cavendish Laboratory to do research in experimental physics, but Salam had no patience for carrying out long experiments in the laboratory. Salam returned to Jhang, Punjab (now part of Pakistan) and renewed his scholarship and returned to the United Kingdom to do his doctorate.

He obtained a PhD degree in theoretical physics from the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge. His doctoral thesis titled "Developments in quantum theory of fields" contained comprehensive and fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics. By the time it was published in 1951, it had already gained him an international reputation and the Adams Prize. During his doctoral studies, his mentors challenged him to solve within one year an intractable problem which had defied such great minds as Paul Dirac and Richard Feynman. Within six months, Salam had found a solution for the renormalisation of meson theory. As he proposed the solution at the Cavendish Laboratory, Salam had attracted the attention of Hans Bethe, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Dirac.

After receiving his doctorate in 1951, Salam returned to Lahore at the Government College University as a Professor of Mathematics where he remained till 1954. In 1952, he was appointed professor and Chair of the Department of Mathematics at the neighbouring University of the Punjab. In the latter capacity, Salam sought to update the university curriculum, introducing a course in Quantum mechanics as a part of the undergraduate curriculum. However, this initiative was soon reverted by the Vice-Chancellor, and Salam decided to teach an evening course in Quantum Mechanics outside the regular curriculum. While Salam enjoyed a mixed popularity in the university, he began to supervise the education of students who were particularly influenced by him. As a result, Riazuddin remained the only student of Salam who had the privilege to study under Salam at the undergraduate and post-graduate level in Lahore, and post-doctoral level in Cambridge University. In 1953, Salam was unable to establish a research institute in Lahore, as he faced strong opposition from his peers. In 1954, Salam took fellowship and became one of the earliest fellows of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences. As a result of 1953 Lahore riots, Salam went back to Cambridge and joined St John's College, and took a position as a professor of mathematics in 1954. In 1957, he was invited to take a chair at Imperial College, London, and he and Paul Matthews went on to set up the Theoretical Physics Department at Imperial College. As time passed, this department became one of the prestigious research departments that included well known physicists such as Steven Weinberg, Tom Kibble, Gerald Guralnik, C. R. Hagen, Riazuddin, and John Ward.

In 1957, Punjab University conferred Salam with an Honorary doctorate for his contribution in Particle physics. The same year with help from his mentor, Salam launched a scholarship programme for his students in Pakistan. Salam retained strong links with Pakistan, and visited his country from time to time. At Cambridge and Imperial College he formed a group of theoretical physicists, the majority of whom were his Pakistani students. At age 33, Salam became one of the youngest persons to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1959. Salam took a fellowship at the Princeton University in 1959, where he met with J. Robert Oppenheimer and to whom he presented his research work on neutrinos. Oppenheimer and Salam discussed the foundation of electrodynamics, problems and their solution. His dedicated personal assistant was Jean Bouckley. In 1980, Salam became a foreign fellow of the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences.

St John's College, Cambridge is where Salam studied.

Early in his career, Salam made an important and significant contribution in quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory, including its extension into particle and nuclear physics. In his early career in Pakistan, Salam was greatly interested in mathematical series and their relation to physics. Salam had played an influential role in the advancement of nuclear physics, but he maintained and dedicated himself to mathematics and theoretical physics and focused Pakistan to do more research in theoretical physics. However, he regarded nuclear physics (nuclear fission and nuclear power) as a non-pioneering part of physics as it had already "happened". Even in Pakistan, Salam was the leading driving force in theoretical physics in Pakistan, with many scientists he continued to influence and encourage to keep their work on theoretical physics.

Salam had a prolific research career in theoretical and high-energy physics. Salam had worked on theory of the neutrino – an elusive particle that was first postulated by Wolfgang Pauli in the 1930s. Salam introduced chiral symmetry in the theory of neutrinos. The introduction of chiral symmetry played crucial role in subsequent development of the theory of electroweak interactions. Salam later passed his work to Riazuddin, who made pioneering contributions in neutrinos. Salam introduced the massive Higgs bosons to the theory of the Standard Model, where he later predicted the existence of proton decay. In 1963, Salam published his theoretical work on the vector meson. The paper introduced the interaction of vector meson, photon (vector electrodynamics), and the renormalisation of vector mesons' known mass after the interaction. In 1961, Salam began to work with John Clive Ward on symmetries and electroweak unification. In 1964, Salam and Ward worked on a Gauge theory for the weak and electromagnetic interaction, subsequently obtaining SU(2) × U(1) model. Salam was convinced that all the elementary particle interactions are actually the gauge interactions. In 1968, together with Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow, Salam formulated the mathematical concept of their work. While in Imperial College, Salam, along with Glashow and Jeffrey Goldstone, mathematically proved the Goldstone's theorem, that a massless spin-zero object must appear in a theory as a result of spontaneous breaking of a continuous global symmetry. In 1960, Salam and Weinberg incorporated the Higgs mechanism into Glashow's discovery, giving it a modern form in electroweak theory, and thus theorised the Standard Model. In 1968, together with Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow, Salam finally formulated the mathematical concept of their work.

In 1966, Salam carried out pioneering work on a hypothetical particle. Salam showed the possible electromagnetic interaction between the Magnetic monopole and the C-violation, thus he formulated the magnetic photon.

Following the publication of PRL Symmetry Breaking papers in 1964, Steven Weinberg and Salam were the first to apply the Higgs mechanism to electroweak symmetry breaking. Salam provided a mathematical postulation for the interaction between the Higgs boson and the electroweak symmetry theory.

In 1972, Salam began to work with Indian-American theoretical physicist Jogesh Pati. Pati wrote to Salam several times expressing interest to work under Salam's direction, in response to which Salam eventually invited Pati to the ICTP seminar in Pakistan. Salam suggested to Pati that there should be some deep reason why the protons and electrons are so different and yet carry equal but opposite electric charge. Protons carry quarks, but the electroweak theory was concerned only with the electrons and neutrinos, with nothing postulated about quarks. If all of nature's ingredients could be brought together in one new symmetry, it might reveal a reason for the various features of these particles and the forces they feel. This led to the development of Pati–Salam model in particle physics. In 1973, Salam and Jogesh Pati were the first to notice that since Quarks and Leptons have very similar SU(2) × U(1) representation content, they all may have similar entities. They provided a simple realisation of the quark-lepton symmetry by postulating that lepton number was a fourth colour, dubbed "violet".

Abdus Salam with Pakistani intellectual Syed Qasim Mahmood in 1986

Physicists had believed that there were four fundamental forces of nature: the gravitational force, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and the electromagnetic force. Salam had worked on the unification of these forces from 1959 with Glashow and Weinberg. While at Imperial College London, Salam successfully showed that weak nuclear forces are not really different from electromagnetic forces, and two could inter-convert. Salam provided a theory that shows the unification of two fundamental forces of nature, weak nuclear forces and the electromagnetic forces, one into another. Glashow had also formulated the same work, and the theory was combined in 1966. In 1967, Salam proved the electroweak unification theory mathematically, and finally published the papers. For this achievement, Salam, Glashow, and Weinberg were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979. The Nobel Prize Foundation paid tribute to the scientists and issued a statement saying: 

"For their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current"

In the 1970s Salam continued trying to unify forces by including the strong interaction in a grand unified theory.

Abdus Salam returned to Pakistan in 1960 to take charge of a government post given to him by President Ayub Khan. From her independence in 1947 after the Partition of India, Pakistan has never had a coherent science policy, and total expenditure on research and development was only ~1.0% of Pakistan's GDP. Even the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) headquarters was located in a small room, and less than 10 scientists were working on fundamental physics concepts. Salam replaced Salimuzzaman Siddiqui as the Science Advisor, and became first Member of PAEC. Salam expanded the web of physics research and development in Pakistan by sending more than 500 scientists abroad. In 1961 he approached President Khan to set up the country's first national space agency, thus on 16 September 1961 the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) was established, with Salam as its first director. Before 1960, very little work on scientific development was done, and scientific activities in Pakistan were almost diminished.[clarify] Salam called Ishfaq Ahmad, a nuclear physicist, who had left for Switzerland where he joined CERN, back to Pakistan. With the support of Salam, PAEC established PAEC Lahore Center-6, with Ishfaq Ahmad as its first director. In 1967, Salam became a central and administrative figure to lead the research in Theoretical and Particle physics. With the establishment of the Institute of Physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, research in theoretical and particle physics was engaged. Under Salam's direction, physicists tackled the greatest outstanding problems in physics and mathematics and their physics research reached a point that prompted worldwide recognition of Pakistani physicists.

From time immemorial, man has desired to comprehend the complexity of nature in terms of as few elementary concepts as possible.

From the 1950s, Salam had tried establishing high-powered research institutes in Pakistan, though he was unable to do so. He moved PAEC Headquarters to a bigger building, and established research laboratories all over the country. On the direction of Salam, Ishrat Hussain Usmani set up plutonium and uranium exploration committees throughout the country. In October 1961, Salam travelled to the United States and signed a space co-operation agreement between Pakistan and US. In November 1961, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) started to build a space facility – Flight Test Center (FTC) – at Sonmiani, a coastal town in Balochistan Province. Salam served as its first technical director.

Salam played an influential and significant role in Pakistan's development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. In 1964, he was made head of Pakistan's IAEA delegation and represented Pakistan for a decade. The same year, Salam joined Munir Ahmad Khan – his lifelong friend and contemporary at Government College University. Khan was the first person in the IAEA that Salam had consulted about the establishment of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), a research physics institution, in Trieste, Italy. With an agreement signed with IAEA, the ICTP was set up with Salam as its first director. At IAEA, Salam had advocated the importance of nuclear power plants in his country. It was due to his effort that in 1965, Canada and Pakistan signed a nuclear energy co-operation deal. Salam obtained permission from President Ayub Khan – against the wishes of his own government functionaries – to set up the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant. Also in 1965, led by Salam, the United States and Pakistan signed an agreement in which the US provided Pakistan with a small research reactor (PARR-I). Salam had a long-held dream to establish a research institute in Pakistan, which he had advocated for on many occasions. In 1965 again, Salam and architect Edward Durell Stone signed a contract for the establishment of the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (PINSTECH) at Nilore, Islamabad.

In early 1961, Salam approached President Khan to lay the foundations of Pakistan's first executive agency to co-ordinate space research. By executive order on 16 September 1961 the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) was established with Salam founding director. Salam immediately travelled to the United States, where he signed a space co-operation agreement with the US Government. In November 1961, NASA built the Flight Test Center in Balochistan Province. During this time, Salam visited the Pakistan Air Force Academy where he met with Air Commodore (Brigadier-General) Wladyslaw Turowicz – a Polish military scientist and an aerospace engineer. Turowicz was made the first technical director of the space centre, and a programme of rocket testing ensued. In 1964, while in the US Salam visited the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and met with nuclear engineers Salim Mehmud and Tariq Mustafa. Salam signed another agreement with the NASA which launched a programme to provide training to Pakistan's scientists and engineers. Both nuclear engineers returned to Pakistan and were inducted into SUPARCO.

Salam knew the importance of nuclear technology in Pakistan, for civilian and peaceful purposes. But, according to his biographers, Salam played an ambiguous role in Pakistan's own atomic bomb project. As late as the 1960s, Salam made an unsuccessful proposal for the establishment of a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, but it was deferred on economic grounds by Ayub Khan. According to Rehman, Salam's influence in nuclear development was diminished as late as 1974, and he became critical of Bhutto's control over science. But Salam personally did not terminate his connection with the scientists working in the theoretical physics division at PAEC. As early as 1972–73, he had been a great advocate for the atomic bomb project, but subsequently took a stance against it after he fell out with Bhutto over the Second Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan which declared the Ahmaddiya denomination to be non-Islamic.

In 1965, Salam led the establishment of the nuclear research institute PINSTECH. In 1965, the plutonium Pakistan Atomic Research Reactor (PARR-I) went critical under Salams' leadership. In 1973, Salam proposed the idea of establishing an annual college to promote scientific activities in the country to the Chairman of PAEC, Munir Khan, who accepted and fully supported the idea. This led to the establishment of the International Nathiagali Summer College on Physics and Contemporary Needs (INSC), where each year since 1976 scientists from all over the world come to Pakistan to interact with local scientists. The first annual INSC conference was held on advanced particle and nuclear physics.

In November 1971, Salam met with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in his residence, and following Bhutto's advice, went to the United States to avoid the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. Salam travelled to the US and returned to Pakistan with scientific literature about the Manhattan Project, and calculations involving atomic bombs. In 1972, the Government of Pakistan learned about the development status of the first atomic bomb completed under the Indian nuclear programme. On 20 January 1972, Salam, as Science Advisor to the President of Pakistan, managed and participated in a secret meeting of nuclear scientists with former Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in Multan, known as the 'Multan Meeting'. Few months after the meeting, Salam, Khan, and Riazuddin, met with Bhutto in his residence where the scientists briefed him about the nuclear weapons program. After the meeting, Salam established the 'Theoretical Physics Group' (TPG) in PAEC. Salam led groundbreaking work at TPG until 1974.

In 2008, Indian scholar Ravi Singh noted in his book The Military Factor in Pakistan that, "in 1978, Abdus Salam with PAEC officials, paid a secret visit to China, and was instrumental in initiating industrial nuclear cooperation between the two countries. Although he had left the country, Salam did not hesitate to advise the PAEC and Theoretical and Mathematical Physics Group on important scientific matters, and kept his close association with TPG and PAEC.

Advocacy for science

In 1964, Salam founded the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, in Italy and served as its director until 1993. In 1974, he founded the International Nathiagali Summer College (INSC) to promote science in Pakistan.[94] The INSC is an annual meeting of scientists from all over the world who come to Pakistan and hold discussions on physics and science.[94] Even today, the INSC holds annual meetings, and Salam's pupil Riazuddin has been its director since its start.

In 1997, the scientists at ICTP commemorated Salam and renamed ICTP as the "Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics". Throughout the years, he served on a number of United Nations committees concerning science and technology in developing countries.Salam also founded the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and was a leading figure in the creation of a number of international centres dedicated to the advancement of science and technology.

During a visit to the Institute of Physics at Quaid-i-Azam University in 1979, Salam explained after receiving an award: Physicists believed there are four fundamental forces of nature; the gravitational force, the weak and strong nuclear force, and the electromagnetic force. Salam was a firm believer that "scientific thought is the common heritage of mankind", and that developing nations needed to help themselves, and invest in their own scientists to boost development and reduce the gap between the Global South and the Global North, thus contributing to a more peaceful world.

In 1981, Salam became a founding member of the World Cultural Council.

Although Salam left Pakistan, he did not terminate his connection to it. He continued inviting Pakistan's scientists to ICTP, and maintained a research programme for them. Many prominent scientists, including Ghulam Murtaza, Riazuddin, Kamaluddin Ahmed, Faheem Hussain, Raziuddin Siddiqui, Munir Ahmad Khan, Ishfaq Ahmad, and I. H. Usmani considered him as their mentor and a teacher.

Personal life

Abdus Salam was a very private individual, who kept his public and personal lives quite separate. He married twice; first time to a cousin, the second time in accordance with Islamic law. At his death, he was survived by three daughters and a son by his first wife, and a son and daughter by his second wife, Professor Dame Louise Johnson, formerly Professor of molecular biophysics at Oxford University. Two of his daughters are Anisa Bushra Salam Bajwa and Aziza Rahman.

Religion

Salam was an Ahmadi Muslim, who saw his religion as a fundamental part of his scientific work. He once wrote that "the Holy Quran enjoins us to reflect on the verities of Allah's created laws of nature; however, our generation has been privileged to glimpse at his design is a better and graceful way for which I render thanks with a humble heart.”

During his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Physics, Salam quoted verses from the Quran and stated:

"Thou seest not, in the creation of the All-merciful any imperfection, Return thy gaze, seest thou any fissure? Then Return thy gaze, again and again. Thy gaze, Comes back to thee dazzled, aweary." This, in effect, is the faith of all physicists; the deeper we seek, the more is our wonder excited, the more is the dazzlement for our gaze.

In 1974, the Pakistan parliament made the Second Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan that declared Ahmadi to be non-Muslim. In protest, Salam left Pakistan for London. After his departure, he did not completely cut his ties to Pakistan, and kept a close association with the Theoretical Physics Group as well as academic scientists from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission.

Death

Abdus Salam died on 21 November 1996 at the age of 70 in Oxford, England, from progressive supranuclear palsy. His body was returned to Pakistan and kept in Darul Ziafat, where some 13,000 men and women visited to pay their last respects. Approximately 30,000 people attended his funeral prayers.

Salam was buried in Bahishti Maqbara, a cemetery established by the Ahmadiyya Community at Rabwah, Punjab, Pakistan, next to his parents' graves. The epitaph on his tomb initially read "First Muslim Nobel Laureate". The Pakistani government removed "Muslim" and left only his name on the headstone. They are the only nation to officially declare that Ahmadis are non-Muslim. The word "Muslim" was initially obscured on the orders of a local magistrate before moving to the national level. Under Ordinance XX of 1984, being an Ahmadi, he was considered a non-Muslim according to the definition provided in the Second Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan.

Legacy

His craving for nationalism is symbolized best by his wish to be buried in his own homeland. He loved his country and its soil. We projected him as a hero, a father, and role model for our young scientists...

— Masud Ahmad, on Salam's legacy,

Salam's work in Pakistan has been far reaching and regarded as highly influential. He is remembered by his peers and students as the "father of Pakistan's school of Theoretical Physics" as well as Pakistan's science. Salam was a charismatic and iconic figure, a symbol among them of what they were working or researching toward in their fields.His students, fellow scientists and engineers, remembered him as brilliant teacher, and engaging researcher who would also influence others to do the same.Salam founded the Space Research Commission of and was its first director. In 1998, the Government of Pakistan issued a commemorative stamp to honour Salam as part of its "Scientists of Pakistan" series. His alma mater, Government College Lahore, now a university, has the Abdus Salam Chair in Physics and Abdus Salam School of Mathematical Sciences named after him. The Abdus Salam Chair was also established in his honour at the Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering in the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He made a significant contribution towards the 2012 success in the search for the Higgs boson.

A commemorative stamp honouring Abdus Salam

Salam has been commemorated by noted and prominent Pakistani scientists, who were also his students. Many scientists have recalled their college experiences. Ghulam Murtaza, a professor of plasma physics at the Government College University and student of Salam, wrote:

"When Dr. Salam was to deliver a lecture, the hall would be packed and although the subject was Particle Physics, his manner and eloquence was such as if he was talking about literature. When he finished his lectures, listeners would often burst into spontaneous applause and give him a standing ovation. People from all parts of the world would come to Imperial College and seek Dr. Salam's help. He would give a patient hearing to everyone including those who were talking nonsense. He treated everyone with respect and compassion and never belittled or offended anyone. Dr. Salam's strength was that he could "sift jewels from the sand".

Ishfaq Ahmad, a lifelong friend of Salam recalls:

Dr Salam was responsible for sending about 500 physicists, mathematicians and scientists from Pakistan, for PhD's to the best institutions in UK and USA.

In August 1996 another lifelong friend, Munir Ahmad Khan, met Salam in Oxford. Khan, who headed the nuclear weapons and nuclear energy programs, said:

My last meeting with Abdus Salam was only three months ago. His disease had taken its toll and he was unable to talk. Yet he understood what was said. I told him about the celebration held in Pakistan on his seventieth birthday. He kept staring at me. He had risen above praise. As I rose to leave he pressed my hand to express his feelings as if he wanted to thank everyone who had said kind words about him. Dr. Abdus Salam had deep love for Pakistan in spite of the fact that he was treated unfairly and indifferently by his own country. It became more and more difficult for him to come to Pakistan and this hurt him deeply. Now he has returned home finally, to rest in peace forever in the soil that he loved so much. Maybe in the years to come we will rise above our prejudice and own him and give him, after his death, what we could not when he was alive. We Pakistanis may choose to ignore Dr. Salam, but the world at large will always remember him.

More facts

Gender: Male
Best Known For: An architect of the second great unification in physics, uniting the electromagnetic force with the weak nuclear force to produce the electroweak force.
Fulfilled his Potential: Yes
Religion: Ahmadi Muslim
First Marriage To: Louise Johnson (m. 1968–1996)
Second Marriage To: Dame Louise Johnson
Children: 6
Children names: Anisa Bushra Salam Bajwa, Aziza Rahman
Father’s Name: Chaudhry Muhammad Hussain
Father’s Occupation: Education officer
Mother’s Name: Hajira Hussain
Citizen Of: Pakistan
Doctoral Advisors: Nicholas Kemmer, Paul Matthews
Awards:
Nobel Prize in Physics (Stockholm, Sweden) (1979)
Hopkins Prize (Cambridge University) for "the most outstanding contribution to Physics during 1957–1958"
Adams Prize (Cambridge University) (1958)
Fellow of the Royal Society (1959)
Smith's Prize (Cambridge University) (1950)
Sitara-e-Pakistan by the President of Pakistan for contribution to science in Pakistan (1959)
Pride of Performance Award by the President of Pakistan (1958)
First recipient of Maxwell Medal and Award (Physical Society, London)
Hughes Medal (Royal Society, London) (1964)
Atoms for Peace Award (Atoms for Peace Foundation) (1968)
J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize and Medal (University of Miami) (1971)
Guthrie Medal and Prize (1976)
Sir Devaprasad Sarvadhikary Gold Medal (Calcutta University) (1977)
Matteuci Medal (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome) (1978)
John Torrence Tate Medal (American Institute of Physics) (1978)
Royal Medal (Royal Society, London) (1978)
Nishan-e-Imtiaz by the President of Pakistan for outstanding performance in Scientific projects in Pakistan (1979)
Einstein Medal (UNESCO, Paris) (1979)
Shri R.D. Birla Award (India Physics Association) (1979)
Order of Andres Bello (Venezuela) (1980)
Order of Istiqlal (Jordan) (1980)
Cavaliere de Gran Croce dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana (1980)
Josef Stefan Medal (Josef Stefan Institute, Ljublijana) (1980)
Gold Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Physics (Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Prague) (1981)
Peace Medal (Charles University, Prague) (1981)
Lomonosov Gold Medal (USSR Academy of Sciences) (1983)
Premio Umberto Biancamano (Italy) (1986)
Dayemi International Peace Award (Bangladesh) (1986)
First Edinburgh Medal and Prize (Scotland) (1988)
"Genoa" International Development of Peoples Prize (Italy) (1988)
Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (1989)
Catalunya International Prize (Spain) (1990)
Copley Medal (Royal Society, London) (1990)
Worked with: Jogesh Pati, Sheldon Glashow, Steven Weinberg
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