Salam was a science advisor to the Government of Pakistan from 1960 till 1974, a position from which he played a major and influential role in Pakistan's science infrastructure. Salam was responsible for not only major development and contribution in theoretical and particle physics, but as well as promoting scientific research at maximum level in his country. Salam was the founding director of Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO), and responsible for the establishment of the Theoretical Physics Group (TPG) in Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC). As Science Advisor, Salam played an integral role in Pakistan's development on peaceful use of nuclear energy, and directed the research on development of weapons in 1972. In 1974, Salam left Pakistan in protest when Pakistan Parliament controversially passed a parliamentary bill declaring Ahmadiyya Muslim Community as Non-Muslims. Even after his death, Salam remained one of the most influential scientists in his country. In 1998, following the country's 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 major and 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 most prestigious award in Physics — the Nobel Prize. Salam made a major contribution in Quantum Field Theory and advancement of Mathematics at the Imperial College. 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 modernizing 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 while his stay as Science advisor. Salam heavily contributed to the rise of Pakistani physics to the Physics community in the world. Even until his death, Salam continued to contribute in physics and tirelessly advocated for the development of science in third world countries.
At age fourteen, 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, British Punjab State. Salam was a versatile scholar, interested in Urdu and English literature in which he excelled. But, 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 MathematicsAs 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 Indian Civil Service in His Majesty's Government. 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 Cavendish Laboratory to do the research on experimental physics, but Salam had no patience for carrying out long experiments in laboratory. His doctoral thesis 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.
While he was doing his doctorate, his mentors challenged him to solve an intractable problem within one year, a problem that had defied such great minds as Dirac and Feynman. This was soon reverted back by the Vice-Chancellor, and Salam decided to teach an evening course in Quantum Mechanics outside the regular curriculum. While Salam had 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 has privileged to study under Salam at the Under-graduate 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 riots in Lahore, 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 of London, and he and Paul Matthews went on to set up the Theoretical Physics Department at Imperial College. While, he kept his strong association links with Pakistan, and visited his country time by time. As time passes, this department became one of the prestigious research department 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. At Cambridge and Imperial College he had formed a group of theoretical physicists, the majority of them were his Pakistani students. In 1959, he became one of the youngest to be named Fellow of the Royal Society at the age of 33. Salam took a fellowship at the Princeton University in 1959, where he met with J. Robert Oppenheimer. Salam presented his brief and research work on neutrinos to Oppenheimer. Both Oppenheimer and Salam discussed the foundation of electrodynamics, problems and their solution, in which Salam was praised by Oppenhimer. His dedicated personal assistant was Jean Bouckley. In 1980, Salam became was a foreign fellow of Bangladesh Academy of Sciences
In 1966, Salam carried out the pioneering work on Magnetic photon— 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 while observing 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 was invited by Salam at the ICTP seminar in which Pati suggests that there should be some deep reason why the protons and electrons are so different yet to contrive or form to carry equal but opposite amount of electricity. Protons carry quarks, but the electroweak theory only worried about the electrons and neutrinos, and nothing postulated about quarks. Bringing all these nature's ingredients together in one new symmetry, it might reveal a reason for the contrariety of these particles and the forces they feel. This led to a 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 simply provided the simplest realization of the quark-lepton universality by postulating that "Lepton number is the fourth colour. Physicists believed that there are four fundamental forces of nature; gravitational force, strong and weak nuclear force, and the electromagnetic force. Salam had worked on the unification of these forces from 1959 with Glashow and Weinberg at the Imperial College. Salam was highly convinced 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, strong and weak nuclear forces and the electromagnetic forces, one into another. From 1959, Salam had searched for such unity that takes place in them. In 1966, Glashow had formulated the same work, and the theory was combined in 1966. In 1967, Salam proved the 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.
From 1950s, Salam had tirelessly tried establishing a high-powered research institutes in Pakistan, though he was unable to do it. Salam moved PAEC Headquarters to a bigger building, and established research laboratories all over the country. On the advice of Salam, Ishrat Hussain Usmani set up plutonium and uranium exploration committees throughout the country. In October 1961, Salam traveled to the United States and signed an space-cooperation agreement with United States. on November 1961, NASA had built a space facility — Flight Test Range — in Balochistan where Salam served as its first technical director.
Abdus played an influential and significant role in Pakistan's development in nuclear energy as well as weapons programme in 1972. In 1964, Salam was made head of Pakistan's IAEA delegation and represented Pakistan for a decade. The same year, Salam joined Munir Ahmad Khan — Salam's life-long friend and contemporary at Government College University. Khan was the first person in the IAEA that Salam had consulted about the establishment of International Centre for Theoretical Physics, a research physics institution, in Trieste, Italy. With an agreement signed with IAEA, the International Centre for Theoretical Physics was set up with Salam as its first director. At IAEA, Salam had tirelessly advocated the importance of nuclear power plants in his country. It was his efforts, in 1965, Canada and Pakistan signed a nuclear energy cooperation deal. Salam had obtained the permission from Ayub Khan — against the wishes of Ayub Khan's own government — to set up the nuclear power plant near at the Karachi. In 1965, with the efforts led by Salam, the United States and Pakistan signed an agreement in which th U.S. provided a small research reactor. Salam had a long dream to established a research institute in Pakistan, for which he had advocated on many different occasions. In 1965, Salam and Edward Durrell Stone signed a contract for the establishment of Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology at Nilore, Islamabad.
An office was set up for Salam in the Prime ministers' Secretariat by order of Bhutto. Salam immediately started to motivate and gravitate scientists to begin work with PAEC in the development of fission weapons. In December 1972, two theoretical physicists working at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics were asked by Salam to report to noted Pakistani nuclear engineer, Munir Ahmad Khan (late), then-PAEC chairman. This marked the beginning of the "Theoretical Physics Group (TPG)", reporting directly to Salam. The TPG, in PAEC, was assigned to conduct research in Fast neutron calculations, Hydrodynamics (how the explosion produced by a chain reaction might behave), problems of neutron diffusion, and the development of theoretical designs of Pakistan's nuclear weapon devices. Later, the Theoretical Physics Group working under the leadership of Riazuddin, who was also Salam's student, began to directly report to Salam, and the work on the theoretical design of the nuclear weapon device was completed in 1977. Hence, Salam had led the groundbreaking work in the development of the weapons programme, with Khan. In 1972, Salam had formed the Mathematical Physics Group, under Raziuddin Siddiqui, that was charged, with the Theoretical Physics Group, to carry out the research in the theory of simultaneity during the detonation process, and mathematics involved in the theory of nuclear fission Following the India's surprise nuclear test —Pokhran-I — in 1974, Munir Ahmad Khan had called for a meeting to initiate the work on atomic bomb, which was attended by Salam and where Muhammad Hafeez Qureshi was appointed head of the Directorate of Technical Development in PAEC. The DTD was set up to coordinate the work of the various specialized groups of scientists and engineers working on different aspects of the atomic bomb. Following the setting up of DTD, Salam, along with Riazuddin and Munir Ahmad Khan, visited the Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF) where they held talks and discussions with senior military engineers led by POF Chairman Lieutenant-General Qamar Ali Mirza. Thus, the Wah Group working under the DTD was charged with the material and triggering mechanism development of the weapon. Salam remained associated with the nuclear weapons programme until 1974, when he left the country after Ahmadis were declared non-Muslims by the Pakistani Parliament. 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.
In 1997, the scientists at ICPT commemorated Salam and renamed ICTP as "Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics". Salam had advocated for development of Science in third world countries, and attended various seminars in different countries. Throughout the years, Salam 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 his visit at the Institute of Physics of Quaid-i-Azam University in 1979, Salam had explained after receiving his 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.
Although Salam had departed from Pakistan, he did not terminate his connection to Pakistan. Salam continued inviting Pakistan's scientists to ICTP, and maintained a research programme for the Pakistani scientists. 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.
"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."''
During his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Physics, Salam quoted the following verses from the Quran:
He then said:
In 1974, the Pakistan Parliament made a constitutional amendment that declared Ahmadi Muslims as 'non-Muslims'. In protest, Salam left Pakistan for London. Even after his departure, Salam did not completely terminate his connection to Pakistan, and kept his close association with the Theoretical Physics Group as well as academic scientists from Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC). Leaving Pakistan in protest was one of Salam's greatest regrets. At ICTP, Salam had launched series of post-research programmes for Pakistani academics with whom he had developed extremely close relations. In 1983, Riazuddin and Asghar Qadir returned to ICTP where they had joined Salam, and stayed with him until 1990.
Salam was buried in Bahishti Maqbara, a cemetery established by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Rabwah, Pakistan next to his parents' graves. The epitaph on his tomb initially read "First Muslim Nobel Laureate" but, because of Salam's adherence to the Ahmadiyya Muslim sect, the word "Muslim" was later erased on the orders of a local magistrate, leaving the nonsensical "First Nobel Laureate". Under Ordinance XX, Ahmadis are considered non-Muslims.
However, Salam has been commemorated by Pakistan's noted and prominent 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 has puts it:
"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".
Dr. Ishfaq Ahmad, former chairman of the PAEC and a lifelong friend of Salam recalls:
"Dr. Abdus Salam was responsible for sending about 500 physicists, mathematicians and scientists from Pakistan, for doctorate’s to the best institutions in UK and U.S.".
In August 1996, the former chairman of PAEC and lifelong friend, Munir Ahmad Khan and met Salam in Oxford, United Kingdom. Munir Ahmad Khan (late), who headed the nuclear weapons and energy programme, 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 for ever in the soil that he loved so much. May be 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."
In 1999, per the recommendation of Ishfaq Ahmad, the Federal Government led the establishment of Salam Chair in Physics at the Government College University. On November 22 of 2009, the Director of Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics had gifted the original Nobel Prize Certificate original to his alma mater. In 2011, GCU's Salam Chair in Physics held a one day long conference that was attributed to Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam. Salam's students dr. Ghulam Murtaza, dr. Perviaz Hoodbhoy, dr. Riazuddin and dr. Tariq Zaidi discussed the life and works of the Nobel Laureate, and lightened the achievement of Salam in Pakistan and in the Physics.
In 1998, the Edward A. Bouchet-ICTP Institute was renamed as Edward Bouchet Abdus Salam Institute. In 2003, Government of Punjab created the institute of excellence for the Mathematical Sciences, Abdus Salam School of Mathematics, in Salam's Alma mater — Government College University.
In 2008, in an opinion, Daily Times called Salam as "one of the greatest scientist Pakistan has ever produced". The Dawn Newspapers published an interview with Zakir Thaver, a Pakistani film director and producer, who is set to released another documentary film. In an editorial, the Dawn Newspapers called Abdus Salam as "the greatest physicist that comes from Pakistan".
The Abdus Salam Medal is presented by the Third World Academy of Sciences in Trieste, Italy. First given in 1995, the award is presented to the people who have served the cause of science in the Developing World.
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Category:1926 births Category:1996 deaths Category:Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge Category:Academics of Imperial College London Category:Adams Prize recipients Category:Fellows of the Royal Society Category:Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit recipients Category:Members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences Category:Muslim scholars Category:Nishan-e-Imtiaz Category:Nobel laureates in Physics Category:Recipients of the Copley Medal Category:Pakistani academics Category:Pakistani theoretical physicists Category:Pakistani Nobel laureates Category:Pakistani physicists Category:Pakistani scientists Category:Pakistani scholars Category:Pakistani Muslims Category:Punjabi Nobel laureates Category:Ravians Category:Theoretical physicists Category:Pakistani Ahmadis Category:Royal Medal winners Category:Project-706 Category:University of the Punjab alumni Category:Fellows of Bangladesh Academy of Sciences Category:Atoms for Peace Award recipients Category:Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission people Category:Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Category:People from Jhang Category:Fellows of Pakistan Academy of Sciences Category:Recipients of the Pride of Performance award
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