Southern aspect of the laboratory at its current site, viewed from across the lake

The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the university's School of Physical Sciences. It was opened in 1874 as a teaching laboratory.

The Department is named after William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire, who was Chancellor of the University and donated money for the construction of the laboratory.^[1] Professor James Clerk Maxwell, the developer of electromagnetic theory, was a founder of the lab and became the first Cavendish Professor of Physics.^[2]

As of 2006^[update], 29 Cavendish researchers have won Nobel Prizes.^[3]

About the department[link]

The Cavendish Laboratory was initially located on the New Museums Site, Free School Lane, in the centre of Cambridge. After perennial space problems, it moved to its present site in West Cambridge in the early 1970s. Physical Chemistry (originally the department of Colloid Science under Eric Rideal) left the Cavendish site earlier, subsequently locating as the Department of Physical Chemistry (under RG Norrish) in the then new chemistry building with the Department of Chemistry (under Lord Todd) in Lensfield Road: both chemistry departments merged in the 1980s.

The current head of the Cavendish is James Stirling. The Cavendish Professorship of Physics is currently held by Sir Richard Friend.

Nuclear physics[link]

Entrance, old site, Free School Lane

In World War II the laboratory carried out research for the MAUD Committee, part of the British Tube Alloys project of research into the Atomic Bomb. Researchers included Nicholas Kemmer, Allan Nunn May, Anthony French, Samuel Curran and the French scientists including Lew Kowarski and Hans von Halban. Several transferred to Canada in 1943; the Montreal Laboratory and some later to the Chalk River Laboratories.

The production of plutonium and neptunium by bombarding uranium-238 with neutrons was predicted in 1940 by two teams working independently: Egon Bretscher and Norman Feather at the Cavendish and Edwin M. McMillan and Philip Abelson at Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.

Biology[link]

The Cavendish Laboratory has had an important influence on biology, mainly through the application of X-ray crystallography to the study of structures of biological molecules. Francis Crick already worked in the Medical Research Council Unit, headed by Max Perutz and housed in the Cavendish Laboratory, when James Watson came from the United States and they made a breakthrough in discovering the structure of DNA. For their work while in the Cavendish Laboratory, they were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962, together with Maurice Wilkins of King's College London, himself a graduate of St. John's College, Cambridge.

Groups[link]

Areas in which the Laboratory has been very influential since 1950 include:-

• Shoenberg Laboratory for Quantum Matter [2] (under Gil Lonzarich)
• Superconductivity Josephson junction (under A Brian Pippard)
• Theory of Condensed Matter, which is the dominant theoretical group.
• Electron Microscopy (under Archie Howie)
• Radio Astronomy (under Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish), with the Radio Astronomy Group's telescopes being based at Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory.
• Semiconductor Physics

Nobel Prize winning Cavendish researchers[link]

Plaque, at old site

• Lord Rayleigh (Physics, 1904)
• Sir J.J. Thomson (Physics, 1906)
• Lord Rutherford (Ernest Rutherford) (Chemistry, 1908)
• Sir Lawrence Bragg (Physics, 1915)
• Charles Barkla (Physics, 1917)
• Francis Aston (Chemistry, 1922)
• C.T.R. Wilson (Physics, 1927)
• Arthur Compton (Physics, 1927)
• Sir Owen Richardson (Physics, 1928)
• Sir James Chadwick (Physics, 1935)
• Sir George Thomson (Physics, 1937)
• Sir Edward Appleton (Physics, 1947)
• Lord Blackett (Patrick Blackett) (Physics, 1948)
• Sir John Cockcroft (Physics, 1951)
• Ernest Walton (Physics, 1951)
• Francis Crick (Physiology or Medicine, 1962)
• James Watson (Physiology or Medicine, 1962)
• Max Perutz (Chemistry, 1962)
• Sir John Kendrew (Chemistry, 1962)
• Dorothy Hodgkin (Chemistry, 1964)
• Brian Josephson (Physics, 1973)
• Sir Martin Ryle (Physics, 1974)
• Antony Hewish (Physics, 1974)
• Sir Nevill Mott (Physics, 1977)
• Philip Anderson (Physics, 1977)
• Pjotr Kapitsa (Physics, 1978)
• Allan Cormack (Physiology or Medicine, 1979)
• Sir Aaron Klug (Chemistry, 1982)

Cavendish professors of physics[link]

The Cavendish Professors were the Heads of the Department up to Professor Pippard, when the roles were made separate.

• James Clerk Maxwell 1871–1879
• Lord Rayleigh 1879–1884
• J. J. Thomson 1884–1919
• Ernest Rutherford 1919–1937
• William Lawrence Bragg 1938–1953
• Nevill Mott 1954–1971
• Brian Pippard 1971–1984
• Sam Edwards 1984–1995
• Richard Friend 1995–present

References[link]

1. ^ The Times 4 Nov 1873 page 8
2. ^ Cambridge University , Department of Physics website "The Old Cavendish - "The First Ten Years" by Dennise Moralee, from the booklet "A Hundred Years and More of Cambridge Physics," http://www.phy.cam.ac.uk/history/old_maxwell.php
3. ^ [1] — Nobel Prize Winners who have worked for considerable periods of time at the Cavendish Laboratory

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cavendish Laboratory

• Cavendish Laboratory website
• Location of the Cavendish Laboratory on the University map and on Google maps
• Cavendish history
• A history of the Cavendish laboratory, 1871-1910

Coordinates: 52°12′33.35″N 0°05′31.24″E / 52.2092639°N 0.0920111°E / 52.2092639; 0.0920111

1. REDIRECT John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh

Paul Dirac
Born	Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1902-08-08)8 August 1902 Bristol, England
Died	20 October 1984(1984-10-20) (aged 82) Tallahassee, Florida, USA
Nationality	Switzerland (1902–19) United Kingdom (1919–84)
Fields	Physics (theoretical)
Institutions	University of Cambridge University of Miami Florida State University
Alma mater	University of Bristol University of Cambridge
Doctoral advisor	Ralph Fowler
Doctoral students	Homi Bhabha Harish Chandra Mehta Dennis Sciama Fred Hoyle Behram Kurşunoğlu John Polkinghorne
Known for	Dirac equation Dirac comb Dirac delta function Fermi–Dirac statistics Dirac sea Dirac spinor Dirac measure Bra-ket notation Dirac adjoint Dirac large numbers hypothesis Dirac fermion Dirac string Dirac algebra Dirac operator Abraham-Lorentz-Dirac force Dirac bracket Fermi–Dirac integral Negative probability Dirac Picture Dirac-Coulomb-Breit Equation
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (1933) Copley Medal (1952) Max Planck Medal (1952)
Notes He is the stepfather of Gabriel Andrew Dirac.

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, OM, FRS^[1] ( /dɪˈræk/ di-RAK; 8 August 1902 – 20 October 1984) was an English theoretical physicist who made fundamental contributions to the early development of both quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. He held the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, was a member of the Center for Theoretical Studies, University of Miami, and spent the last decade of his life at Florida State University.

Among other discoveries, he formulated the Dirac equation, which describes the behaviour of fermions, and predicted the existence of antimatter.

Dirac shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1933 with Erwin Schrödinger, "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory."^[2]

Early years[link]

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was born at his parents' home in Bristol, England, on 8 August 1902,^[3] and grew up in the Bishopston area of the city.^[4] His father, Charles Adrien Ladislas Dirac, was an immigrant from Saint-Maurice in the Canton of Valais, Switzerland, who worked in Bristol as a French teacher. His mother, Florence Hannah Dirac, née Holten, the daughter of a ship's captain, was born in Cornwall and worked as a librarian at the Bristol Central Library. Paul had a younger sister, Béatrice Isabelle Marguerite, known as Betty, and an older brother, Reginald Charles Félix, known as Felix,^[5][6] who committed suicide in March 1925.^[7] Dirac later recalled: "My parents were terribly distressed. I didn't know they cared so much. /.../ I never knew that parents were supposed to care for their children, but from then on I knew."^[8]

Charles and the children were officially Swiss nationals until they became naturalised on 22 October 1919.^[9] Dirac's father was strict and authoritarian, although he disapproved of corporal punishment.^[10] Dirac had a strained relationship with his father, so much so that after his death, he wrote, "I feel much freer now, and I am my own man." Charles forced his children to speak to him only in French, in order that they learn the language. When Dirac found that he could not express what he wanted to say in French, he chose to remain silent.^[11][12]

Dirac was educated first at Bishop Road Primary School^[13] and then at the all-boys Merchant Venturers' Technical College (later Cotham School), where his father was a French teacher.^[14] The school was an institution attached to the University of Bristol, which shared grounds and staff.^[15] It emphasised technical subjects like bricklaying, shoemaking and metal work, and modern languages.^[16] This was an unusual arrangement at a time when secondary education in Britain was still dedicated largely to the classics, and something for which Dirac would later express gratitude.^[15]

Dirac studied electrical engineering on a City of Bristol University Scholarship at the University of Bristol's engineering faculty, which was co-located with the Merchant Venturers' Technical College.^[17] Shortly before he completed his degree in 1921, he sat the entrance examination for St John's College, Cambridge. He passed, and was awarded a £70 scholarship, but this fell short of the amount of money required to live and study at Cambridge. Despite graduating with a first class honours bachelor of science degree in engineering, the economic climate of the post-war depression was such that he was unable to find work as an engineer. Instead he took up an offer to study for a bachelor of arts degree in mathematics at the University of Bristol free of charge. He was permitted to skip the first year of the course owing to his engineering degree.^[18]

In 1923, Dirac graduated, once again with first class honours, and received a £140 scholarship from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Along with his £70 scholarship from St John's College, this was enough to live at Cambridge. There, Dirac pursued his interests in the theory of general relativity, an interest he gained earlier as a student in Bristol, and in the nascent field of quantum physics, under the supervision of Ralph Fowler.^[19]

Career[link]

Dirac noticed an analogy between the Poisson brackets of classical mechanics and the recently proposed quantization rules in Werner Heisenberg's matrix formulation of quantum mechanics. This observation allowed Dirac to obtain the quantization rules in a novel and more illuminating manner. For this work, published in 1926, he received a Ph.D. from Cambridge.

In 1928, building on 2x2 spin matrices which he discovered independently (Abraham Pais quoted Dirac as saying "I believe I got these (matrices) independently of Pauli and possibly Pauli got these independently of me")^[20] of Wolfgang Pauli's work on non-relativistic spin systems, he proposed the Dirac equation as a relativistic equation of motion for the wavefunction of the electron.^[21] This work led Dirac to predict the existence of the positron, the electron's antiparticle, which he interpreted in terms of what came to be called the Dirac sea.^[22] The positron was observed by Carl Anderson in 1932. Dirac's equation also contributed to explaining the origin of quantum spin as a relativistic phenomenon.

The necessity of fermions (matter being created and destroyed in Enrico Fermi's 1934 theory of beta decay), however, led to a reinterpretation of Dirac's equation as a "classical" field equation for any point particle of spin ħ/2, itself subject to quantization conditions involving anti-commutators. Thus reinterpreted, in 1934 by Werner Heisenberg, as a (quantum) field equation accurately describing all elementary matter particles- today quarks and leptons – this Dirac field equation is as central to theoretical physics as the Maxwell, Yang-Mills and Einstein field equations. Dirac is regarded as the founder of quantum electrodynamics, being the first to use that term. He also introduced the idea of vacuum polarization in the early 1930s. This work was key to the development of quantum mechanics by the next generation of theorists, and in particular Schwinger, Feynman, Sin-Itiro Tomonaga and Dyson in their formulation of quantum electrodynamics.

Dirac's Principles of Quantum Mechanics, published in 1930, is a landmark in the history of science. It quickly became one of the standard textbooks on the subject and is still used today. In that book, Dirac incorporated the previous work of Werner Heisenberg on matrix mechanics and of Erwin Schrödinger on wave mechanics into a single mathematical formalism that associates measurable quantities to operators acting on the Hilbert space of vectors that describe the state of a physical system. The book also introduced the delta function. Following his 1939 article,^[23] he also included the bra-ket notation in the third edition of his book,^[24] thereby contributing to its universal use nowadays.

In 1933, following his 1931 paper on magnetic monopoles, Dirac showed that the existence of a single magnetic monopole in the universe would suffice to explain the observed quantization of electrical charge. In 1975,^[25] 1982,^[26] and 2009^[27][28][29] intriguing results suggested the possible detection of magnetic monopoles, but there is, to date, no direct evidence for their existence.

Dirac was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge from 1932 to 1969. In 1937, he proposed a speculative cosmological model based on the so-called large numbers hypothesis. During World War II, he conducted important theoretical and experimental research on uranium enrichment by gas centrifuge.

Dirac's quantum electrodynamics made predictions that were – more often than not – infinite and therefore unacceptable. A workaround known as renormalization was developed, but Dirac never accepted this. "I must say that I am very dissatisfied with the situation," he said in 1975, "because this so-called 'good theory' does involve neglecting infinities which appear in its equations, neglecting them in an arbitrary way. This is just not sensible mathematics. Sensible mathematics involves neglecting a quantity when it is small – not neglecting it just because it is infinitely great and you do not want it!"^[30] His refusal to accept renormalization resulted in his work on the subject moving increasingly out of the mainstream. However, from his once rejected notes he managed to work on putting quantum electrodynamics on "logical foundations" based on Hamiltonian formalism that he formulated. He found a rather novel way of deriving the anomalous magnetic moment "Schwinger term" and also the Lamb shift, afresh, using the Heisenberg picture and without using the joining method used by Weisskopf and French, the two pioneers of modern QED, Schwinger and Feynman, in 1963. That was two years before the Tomonaga-Schwinger-Feynman QED was given formal recognition by an award of the Nobel Prize for physics. Weisskopf and French (FW) were the first to obtain the correct result for the Lamb shift and the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron. At first FW results did not agree with the incorrect but independent results of Feynman and Schwinger (Schweber SS 1994 "QED and the men who made it: Dyson,Feynman,Schwinger and Tomonaga", Princeton :PUP). The 1963–1964 lectures Dirac gave on quantum field theory at Yeshiva University were published in 1966 as the Belfer Graduate School of Science, Monograph Series Number, 3. After having relocated to Florida in order to be near his elder daughter, Mary, Dirac spent his last fourteen years (of both life and physics research) at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida and Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.

In the 1950s in his search for a better QED, Paul Dirac developed the Hamiltonian theory of constraints (Canad J Math 1950 vol 2, 129; 1951 vol 3, 1) based on lectures that he delivered at the 1949 International Mathematical Congress in Canada. Dirac (1951 “The Hamiltonian Form of Field Dynamics” Canad Jour Math, vol 3, 1) had also solved the problem of putting the Tomonaga-Schwinger equation into the Schrödinger representation (See Phillips R J N 1987 “Tributes to Dirac” p31 London:Adam Hilger) and given explicit expressions for the scalar meson field (spin zero pion or pseudoscalar meson), the vector meson field (spin one rho meson), and the electromagnetic field (spin one massless boson, photon).

The Hamiltonian of constrained systems is one of Dirac’s many masterpieces. It is a powerful generalization of Hamiltonian theory that remains valid for curved spacetime. The equations for the Hamiltonian involve only six degrees of freedom described by Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): g_{rs} ,Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): p^{rs}

 for each point of the surface on which the state is considered. The  Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): g_{m0}

(m = 0,1,2,3) appear in the theory only through the variables Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): g^{r0} , Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): ( -{g^{00}} ) ^{-1/2}

which occur as arbitrary coefficients in the equations of motion. H=∫Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): d^3

x[Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): ( -{g^{00}} ) ^{-1/2} Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): H_L

– Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): g^{r0}

/Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): g^{00}

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): H_r

] There are four constraints or weak equations for each point of the surface Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): x^0

= constant. Three of them Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): H_r
form the four vector density in the surface. The fourth Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): H_L
is a 3-dimensional scalar density in the surface Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): H_L

≈0; Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): H_r ≈0 (r=1,2,3)

In the late 1950s he applied the Hamiltonian methods he had developed to cast Einstein’s general relativity in Hamiltonian form (Proc Roy Soc 1958,A vol 246, 333,Phys Rev 1959,vol 114, 924) and to bring to a technical completion the quantization problem of gravitation and bring it also closer to the rest of physics according to Salam and DeWitt. In 1959 also he gave an invited talk on "Energy of the Gravitational Field" at the New York Meeting of the American Physical Society later published in 1959 Phys Rev Lett 2, 368. In 1964 he published his “Lectures on Quantum Mechanics” (London:Academic) which deals with constrained dynamics of nonlinear dynamical systems including quantization of curved spacetime. He also published a paper entitled “Quantization of the Gravitational Field” in 1967 ICTP/IAEA Trieste Symposium on Contemporary Physics.

If one considers waves moving in the direction Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): x^3

resolved into the corresponding Fourier components (r,s = 1,2,3), the variables in the degrees of freedom 13,23,33 are affected by the changes in the coordinate system whereas those in the degrees of freedom 12, (11-22) remain invariant under such changes. The expression for the energy splits up into terms each associated with one of  these six degrees of freedom without any cross terms associated with two of them.  The degrees of freedom 13, 23, 33 do not appear at all in the expression for energy of gravitational waves in the direction  Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): x^3

. The two degrees of freedom 12, (11-22) contribute a positive definite amount of such a form to represent the energy of gravitational waves. These two degrees of freedom correspond in the language of quantum theory, to the gravitational photons (gravitons) with spin +2 or -2 in their direction of motion. The degrees of freedom (11+22) gives rise to the Newtonian potential energy term showing the gravitational force between the two positive mass is attractive and the self energy of every mass is negative.

Amongst his many students was John Polkinghorne, who recalls that Dirac "was once asked what was his fundamental belief. He strode to a blackboard and wrote that the laws of nature should be expressed in beautiful equations."^[31]

Personal life[link]

Family[link]

Paul Dirac with wife in Copenhagen, July 1963

Dirac married Eugene Wigner's sister, Margit, in 1937. He adopted Margit's two children, Judith and Gabriel. Paul and Margit Dirac had two children together, both daughters, Mary Elizabeth and Florence Monica.

Margit, known as Manci, visited her brother in 1934 in Princeton, New Jersey from her native Hungary and, while at dinner at the Annex Restaurant (1930s–2006),^[32] met the "lonely-looking man at the next table." This account came from a physicist from Korea who met and was influenced by Dirac, Y.S. Kim, who has also written: "It is quite fortunate for the physics community that Manci took good care of our respected Paul A.M. Dirac. Dirac published eleven papers during the period 1939–46.... Dirac was able to maintain his normal research productivity only because Manci was in charge of everything else."^[33]

A reviewer of the 2009 biography writes: "Dirac blamed his [emotional] frailties on his father, a Swiss immigrant who bullied his wife, chivvied his children and insisted Paul spoke only French at home, even though the Diracs lived in Bristol. 'I never knew love or affection when I was a child,' Dirac once said." She also writes that "[t]he problem lay with his genes. Both father and son had autism, to differing degrees. Hence the Nobel winner's reticence, literal-mindedness, rigid patterns of behaviour and self-centredness. [Quoting the biography:] 'Dirac's traits as a person with autism were crucial to his success as a theoretical physicist: his ability to order information about mathematics and physics in a systematic way, his visual imagination, his self-centredness, his concentration and determination.'"^[34]

Personality[link]

Dirac was known among his colleagues for his precise and taciturn nature. His colleagues in Cambridge jokingly defined a unit of a dirac which was one word per hour.^[35] When Niels Bohr complained that he did not know how to finish a sentence in a scientific article he was writing, Dirac replied, "I was taught at school never to start a sentence without knowing the end of it."^[36] He criticized the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer's interest in poetry: "The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way. The two are incompatible."^[37]

Dirac himself wrote in his diary during his postgraduate years that he concentrated solely on his research, and only stopped on Sunday, when he took long strolls alone.^{[citation needed]}

An anecdote recounted in a review of the 2009 biography tells of Werner Heisenberg and Dirac sailing on a cruise ship to a conference in Japan in August 1929. "Both still in their twenties, and unmarried, they made an odd couple. Heisenberg was a ladies' man who constantly flirted and danced, while Dirac—'an Edwardian geek', as [biographer] Graham Farmelo puts it—suffered agonies if forced into any kind of socialising or small talk. 'Why do you dance?' Dirac asked his companion. 'When there are nice girls, it is a pleasure,' Heisenberg replied. Dirac pondered this notion, then blurted out: 'But, Heisenberg, how do you know beforehand that the girls are nice?'"^[34]

According to a story told in different versions, a friend or student visited Dirac, not knowing of his marriage. Noticing the visitor's surprise at seeing an attractive woman in the house, Dirac said, "This is... this is Wigner's sister". Margit Dirac told both George Gamow and Anton Capri in the 1960s that her husband had actually said, "Allow me to present Wigner's sister, who is now my wife."^[38][39]

Another story told of Dirac is that when he first met the young Richard Feynman at a conference, he said after a long silence "I have an equation. Do you have one too?".^[40]

Dirac was also noted for his personal modesty. He called the equation for the time evolution of a quantum-mechanical operator, which he was the first to write down, the "Heisenberg equation of motion". Most physicists speak of Fermi-Dirac statistics for half-integer-spin particles and Bose-Einstein statistics for integer-spin particles. While lecturing later in life, Dirac always insisted on calling the former "Fermi statistics". He referred to the latter as "Einstein statistics" for reasons, he explained, of "symmetry".^{[citation needed]}

Religious views[link]

Heisenberg recollected a conversation among young participants at the 1927 Solvay Conference about Einstein and Planck's views on religion. Wolfgang Pauli, Heisenberg and Dirac took part in it. Dirac's contribution was a criticism of the political purpose of religion, which was much appreciated for its lucidity by Bohr when Heisenberg reported it to him later. Among other things, Dirac said:

Heisenberg's view was tolerant. Pauli, raised as a Catholic, had kept silent after some initial remarks, but when finally he was asked for his opinion, said: "Well, our friend Dirac has got a religion and its guiding principle is 'There is no God and Paul Dirac is His prophet.'" Everybody, including Dirac, burst into laughter.^[42]

As an author of an article appearing in the May 1963 edition of Scientific American, his reference to God was less acerbic: "It seems to be one of the fundamental features of nature that fundamental physical laws are described in terms of a mathematical theory of great beauty and power, needing quite a high standard of mathematics for one to understand it. You may wonder: Why is nature constructed along these lines? One can only answer that our present knowledge seems to show that nature is so constructed. We simply have to accept it. One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe. Our feeble attempts at mathematics enable us to understand a bit of the universe, and as we proceed to develop higher and higher mathematics we can hope to understand the universe better."^[43]

Death and commemoration[link]

Dirac's grave in Roselawn cemetery, Tallahassee, Florida. Also buried is his wife Manci (Margit Wigner).

In 1984, Dirac died in Tallahassee, Florida and was buried at Tallahassee's Roselawn Cemetery.^[44][45] Dirac's childhood home in Bristol is commemorated with a blue plaque and the nearby Dirac Road is named in recognition of his links with the city. A plaque on the wall at the Bishop Road Primary School shows the Dirac equation.^[46] A commemorative stone was erected in a garden Saint-Maurice, Switzerland, the town of origin of his father's family, on 1 August 1991. On 13 November 1995 a commemorative marker, made from Burlington green slate and inscribed with the Dirac equation, was unveiled in Westminster Abbey.^[44][47] Objections by the Dean of Westminster, Edward Carpenter, that Dirac was an atheist were brushed aside.^[48]

Dirac shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for physics with Erwin Schrödinger "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory."^[2] Dirac was also awarded the Royal Medal in 1939 and both the Copley Medal and the Max Planck medal in 1952. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1930,^[1] an Honorary Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1948, and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics, London in 1971. Dirac became a member of the Order of Merit, an outstanding recognition by the land of his birth, in 1973. He had previously turned down a knighthood, as he did not want to be addressed by his first name.^[49]

In 1975, Dirac gave a series of five lectures at the University of New South Wales which were subsequently published as a book, Directions in Physics (1978). He donated the royalties from this book to the university for the establishment of the Dirac Lecture Series. The Silver Dirac Medal for the Advancement of Theoretical Physics is awarded by the University of New South Wales on the occasion of the lecture.^[50]

Immediately after his death, two organisations of professional physicists established annual awards in Dirac's memory. The Institute of Physics, the United Kingdom's professional body for physicists, awards the Paul Dirac Medal and Prize for "outstanding contributions to theoretical (including mathematical and computational) physics".^[51] The first three recipients were Stephen Hawking (1987), John Stewart Bell (1988), and Roger Penrose (1989). The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) awards the Dirac Medal of the ICTP each year on Dirac's birthday (8 August). Also, the Dirac Prize is awarded by the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in his memory. Dirac House in Bristol is the headquarters of Institute of Physics Publishing.

The Dirac-Hellmann Award at Florida State University was endowed by Dr Bruce P. Hellmann (Dirac's last doctoral student) in 1997 to reward outstanding work in theoretical physics by FSU researchers.^[52] The Paul A.M. Dirac Science Library at Florida State University, which Manci opened in December 1989, is named in his honour, and his papers are held there. Outside is a statue of him by Gabriella Bollobás.^[53] The street on which the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida, is located was named Paul Dirac Drive. As well as in his home town of Bristol, there is also a road named after him in Didcot Oxfordshire, Dirac Way. The BBC named its video codec Dirac in his honour.

Legacy[link]

Dirac is widely regarded as one of the world's greatest physicists. He was one of the founders of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics.

His early contributions include the modern operator calculus for quantum mechanics, which he called transformation theory, and an early version of the path integral.^[54] He formulated a many-body formalism for quantum mechanics which allowed each particle to have its own proper time.

His relativistic wave equation for the electron was the first successful attack on the problem of relativistic quantum mechanics. Dirac founded quantum field theory with his reinterpretation of the Dirac equation as a many-body equation, which predicted the existence of antimatter and matter–antimatter annihilation. He was the first to formulate quantum electrodynamics, although he could not calculate arbitrary quantities because the short distance limit requires renormalization.

In an attempt to solve the quantum divergence problem, Dirac gave a classical point particle theory combining advanced and retarded waves to eliminate the classical electron self-energy. Although these classical methods did not immediately solve the problems in quantum electrodynamics, they did lead John Archibald Wheeler and Richard Feynman to formulate an alternative Green's function description for light, which eventually led to Feynman's point particle formulation of quantum field theory.

Dirac discovered the magnetic monopole solutions, the first topological configuration in physics, and used them to give the modern explanation of charge quantization. He developed constrained quantization in the 1960s, identifying the general quantum rules for arbitrary classical systems.

Dirac's quantum-field analysis of the vibrations of a membrane, in the early 1960s, proved extremely useful to modern practitioners of superstring theory and its closely related successor, M-Theory.^[55]

Bibliography[link]

• Principles of Quantum Mechanics (1930): This book summarizes the ideas of quantum mechanics using the modern formalism that was largely developed by Dirac himself. Towards the end of the book, he also discusses the relativistic theory of the electron (the Dirac equation), which was also pioneered by him. This work does not refer to any other writings then available on quantum mechanics.
• Lectures on Quantum Mechanics (1966): Much of this book deals with quantum mechanics in curved space-time.
• Lectures on Quantum Field Theory (1966): This book lays down the foundations of quantum field theory using the Hamiltonian formalism.
• Spinors in Hilbert Space (1974): This book based on lectures given in 1969 at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, USA, deals with the basic aspects of spinors starting with a real Hilbert space formalism. Dirac concludes with the prophetic words "We have boson variables appearing automatically in a theory that starts with only fermion variables, provided the number of fermion variables is infinite. There must be such boson variables connected with electrons..."
• General Theory of Relativity (1975): This 69-page work summarizes Einstein's general theory of relativity.

See also[link]

• Gamma matrices

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

Further reading[link]

• Brown, Helen (24 January 2009). "The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac by Graham Farmelo – review [print version: The man behind the maths]". The Daily Telegraph (Review): p. 20. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/4316309/The-Strangest-Man-the-Hidden-Life-of-Paul-Dirac-by-Graham-Farmelo---review.html. Retrieved 11 April 2011. .
• Gilder, Louisa (13 September 2009). "Quantum Leap – Review of 'The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac by Graham Farmelo'". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/books/review/Gilder-t.html. Retrieved 11 April 2011.  Review.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Paul Dirac (category)

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Paul Dirac

• Dirac Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics
• Free online access to Dirac's classic 1920s papers from Royal Society's Proceedings A
• Annotated bibliography for Paul Dirac from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
• Dirac Medal of the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists (WATOC)
• The Paul Dirac Collection at Florida State University
• The Paul A. M. Dirac Collection Finding Aid at Florida State University
• Letters from Dirac (1932–36) and other papers, held in the Personal Papers archives of St John's College, Cambridge, UK
• Oral History interview transcript with Dirac 1 April 1962, 6, 7, 10, & 14 May 1963, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
• Photos of Paul Dirac at the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, American Institute of Physics
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Paul Dirac", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews, http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Dirac.html .
• 2010 June 24 – ScienceTalk Part 1 of interview with Graham Farmelo author of The Strangest Man of Science Part 2
• Photocopies of Dirac's papers from the Florida State University collection, held under Dirac's name in the Archive Centre of Churchill College, Cambridge, UK

Dirac videos[link]

• Archival footage of Dirac in Princeton 1947
• Dirac in 1927

Simon Schaffer at a summer school in St. Petersburg, Russia (2001)

Simon Schaffer (born 1 January 1954 in Southampton) is a professor of the history and philosophy of science at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University and was until recently editor of The British Journal for the History of Science.^[1]

Life[link]

Schaffer was born in Southampton and attended Varndean Grammar School for Boys (now Varndean College) in Brighton. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge and went to Harvard as a Kennedy Scholar. In 1974 he was captain of the Trinity College team which won University Challenge. He previously taught at Imperial College London and UCLA. He is also a supporter of Tottenham Hotspur. He has been a Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge since 1985.

Works[link]

He is the co-author, along with Steven Shapin, of the 1985 book Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life.

In addition to his work at Cambridge, he has been a presenter on the BBC, in particular the series "Light Fantastic" broadcast on BBC Four in 2004.^[2][3]

Awards and honours[link]

In 2005 he shared the prestigious Erasmus Prize with Steven Shapin for Leviathan and the Air-Pump. This Dutch prize was handed over by the Dutch crown prince Willem-Alexander and can be regarded as a token of appreciation for the intrinsic value of his work for the history of science in general.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Simon Schaffer's webpage at Cambridge
• BBC interview
• CBC interview -- Ideas: How to Think about Science, podcast available
• Leviathan and the Air-Pump
• Simon Schaffer interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 27th June, continued 1st and 2nd July 2008 (film)
• Simon Schaffer's 2010 Tarner Lectures ”When the stars threw down their spears”: Histories of Astronomy and Empire

This article about a British historian or genealogist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Dr. Abdus Salam
File:Abdus salam.gif Abdus Salam (1926–1996)
Born	29 January 1926 Jhang, Punjab, British India
Died	21 November 1996(1996-11-21) (aged 70) Oxford, England, United Kingdom
Citizenship	Pakistan[1]
Nationality	Pakistani
Fields	Theoretical physics
Institutions	Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (PINSTECH) Punjab University Imperial College, London Government College University University of Cambridge International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) Comsats Institute of Technology Third World Academy of Sciences Edward Bouchet Abdus Salam Institute
Alma mater	University of the Punjab Government College University St John's College, Cambridge
Doctoral advisor	Nicholas Kemmer Paul Matthews
Doctoral students	Michael Duff Walter Gilbert John Moffat Yuval Ne'eman John Polkinghorne Riazuddin Fayyazuddin Masud Ahmad Ghulam Murtaza Munir Ahmad Rashid
Other notable students	Faheem Hussain Pervez Hoodbhoy Abdul Hameed Nayyar
Known for	Electroweak theory Pati-Salam model Quantum mechanics Nuclear Deterrent Program Pakistan's Space Program
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (1979) Copley Medal (1990) Smith's Prize Adams Prize Nishan-e-Imtiaz (1979) Sitara-e-Pakistan (1959) Lomonosov Gold Medal (1983)
Signature

Mohammad Abdus Salam,^[2] NI, SPk^[3] (Urdu: محمد عبد السلام, pronounced English pronunciation: /əbd̪ʊs səlɑm/, (29 January 1926 – 21 November 1996)^[4] was a Pakistani theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his work on the electroweak unification of the electromagnetic and weak forces. Salam, Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg shared the 1979 Nobel prize for this discovery.^[5] Salam holds the distinction of being the first Pakistani and the first Muslim Nobel Laureate to receive the prize in the sciences.^[6]

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.^[6][7] 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.^[7] 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).^[8] As Science Advisor, Salam played an integral role in Pakistan's development of peaceful use of nuclear energy, and directed the research on development of atomic bomb project of Pakistan in 1972; for this, he is viewed as the "scientific father"^[2] of this programme in the views of the scientists who researched under his scientific umbrella.^[9][10][11] 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.^[12]

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.^[5] 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 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 while his stay as Science advisor.^[7][13] Salam heavily contributed to the rise of Pakistani physics to the Physics community in the world.^[14][15] Even until his death, Salam continued to contribute in physics and tirelessly advocated for the development of science in third world countries.^[16]

Biography[link]

Youth and education[link]

Abdus Salam was born in Santokdas, Sahiwal District, according to his elder sister and his obituary, although he grew up in Jhang.^[17] Salam's father was an education officer in the Department of Education of British Punjab State in a poor farming district. Salam's family had a long tradition of piety and passion for learning.

At age fourteen, Salam scored the highest marks ever recorded for the matriculation examination at the Punjab University.^[18] He won a full scholarship to the Government College University of Lahore, British Punjab State.^[19] Salam was a versatile scholar, interested in Urdu and English literature in which he excelled.^[20] But, soon picked up Mathematics as his concentration.^[21] Salam's mentor and tutors wanted him to become an English teacher, but Salam decided to stick with Mathematics^[22] 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.^[23] His father wanted him to join Indian Civil Service in His Majesty's Government.^[22] In those days, the Indian Civil Service was the highest aspiration for young university graduates and civil servants occupied a respected place in the civil society.^[22] 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 Salam wore spectacles since an early age.^[22] The results further concluded that Salam failed a mechanical test necessary for the railway engineers to be passed in order to gain commission in Indian Railways, and the results also stated that Salam was too young for the Indian Railways to compete for the job.^[22] Therefore, Indian Railways rejected Abdus Salam's job application.^[22] While in Lahore, Abdus Salam went on to attend the graduate school of Government College University.^[22] He received his M.A. in Mathematics from the Government College University in 1946.^[16] 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.^[24] In 1950, he received the Smith's Prize from Cambridge University for the most outstanding pre-doctoral contribution to Physics.^[25] 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.^[22] Salam returned to Jhang, Punjab (now part of Pakistan) and renewed his scholarship and returned to United Kingdom to do his doctorate.^[22]

He obtained a PhD degree in Theoretical Physics from Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge.^[26][27] His doctoral thesis contained comprehensive and fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics.^[28] By the time it was published in 1951, it had already gained him an international reputation and the Adams Prize.^[29]

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.^[22] Within a six month period, Salam found a solution for the renormalisation of meson theory. As he proposed the solution at the Cavendish Laboratory, Salam had attracted the attention of Bethe, Oppenheimer and Dirac.^[22]

Academic career[link]

After his doctorate in 1951, Salam returned to the Government College University as a Professor of Mathematics where he remained till 1954. During the same period, he was the Chairman of the Department of Mathematics, and professor as well, at the University of the Punjab. As he became the chairman, Salam sought to update the university curriculum, making a course of Quantum mechanics as a part of undergraduate course.^[30] This was soon reverted back by the Vice-Chancellor, and Salam decided to teach an evening course in Quantum Mechanics outside the regular curriculum.^[31] While Salam had mixed popularity in the university, he began to supervise the education of students who were particularly influenced by him.^[32] As a result, Riazuddin remained the only student of Salam who has the privilege 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.^[33] In 1954, Salam took fellowship and became one of the earliest fellows of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences.^[34] 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.^[35] 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.^[36] While, he kept his strong association links with Pakistan, and visited his country from time to time.^[37] As time passes, 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.^[38]

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.^[4] Salam took a fellowship at the Princeton University in 1959, where he met with J. Robert Oppenheimer.^[39] Salam presented his research work on neutrinos to Oppenheimer.^[40] Both Oppenheimer and Salam discussed the foundation of electrodynamics, problems and their solution, in which Salam was praised by Oppenhimer.^[41] His dedicated personal assistant was Jean Bouckley. In 1980, Salam became was a foreign fellow of Bangladesh Academy of Sciences^[42]

Scientific career[link]

Early in his career, Salam made an important and significant contribution in quantum electrodynamics, quantum field theory, quantum chromodynamics, and including its extension into particle and nuclear physics. In his early career in Pakistan, Salam was highly interested in mathematical series in mathematics, and their possible relations with 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.^[22] Though, he regarded nuclear physics (nuclear fission and nuclear power) as non pioneering part of physics as it had already "happened".^[22] 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.^[22] Salam had a prolific research career in Theoretical and High-energy physics, and either he pioneered or was associated with all the important developments in this field.^[43] Salam had work on theory of the neutrino —an elusive particle that was first postulated by Wolfgang Pauli in 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.^[44] Salam later passed his work to Riazuddin, who made pioneering contributions in neutrinos. In 1960, Salam carried the work on nuclear physics, where he had pioneered the work on proton decay. Salam introduced the induction of the massive Higgs bosons in the theory of the Standard Model, where he predicted the hypothetical form of radioactive decay emitted by Protons, thus he theorised 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 renormalization of vector meson's known mass after the interaction.^[45] In 1962, 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. Even though, the work in this was continued in 1959, Salam had deeply convinced that all the elementary particle interactions are actually the Gauge interactions.^[46] 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.^[46] In 1960, Salam and Weinberg incorporated the Higgs mechanism, into Glashow's discovery, giving a it a modern form in electroweak theory, thus theorised the Standard Model.^[47] In 1968, together with Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow, Salam finally formulated the mathematical concept of their work.

In 1966, Salam carried out the 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.^[48]

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.^[49]

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 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.^[50] 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.^[51] They simply provided the simplest realisation of the quark-lepton universality by postulating that "Lepton number is the fourth colour.^[52] 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.^[43] 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.^[5]

Government work[link]

Salam immediately returned to Pakistan in 1960 to take charge of a government post that was given to him by President Field Marshal Ayub Khan. From her independence, Pakistan has never had a coherent Science policy, and the total expenditure on research and development represent ~1.0% of Pakistan's nature product.^[53] Even the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) headquarter was located in a small room, and less than 10 scientists were working on a fundamental concepts of physics.^[54] Salam replaced Salimuzzaman Siddiqui as Science Advisor, became first Member (technical) of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. Salam expanded the web of physics research and development in Pakistan by sending more than 500 scientists abroad.^[55] On September 1961, Salam approached President Ayub Khan to set up the country's first national space agency.^[56] On 16 September 1961, through an executive order, Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission was established, which Salam served as its first director.^[56] During 1960, a little work on development on science was done, and scientific activities in Pakistan were almost diminished. Salam had called Ishfaq Ahmad, a nuclear physicist, who left the country for Switzerland where he joined CERN, to Pakistan. With the support of Salam, PAEC established PAEC Lahore Center-6, with Ishfaq Ahmad as its first director.^[57] In 1967, Salam became a central and administrative figure to lead the research in both Theoretical and Particle physics.^[14] With the establishment of Institute of Physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, the research in theoretical and particle physics was engaged.^[14] Under Salam's direction, physicists tackled the greatest outstanding problems in physics and mathematics.^[14] Another physicist, Raziuddin Siddiqui, established numerous physics research group and supervised the research activities in the academic institutions of Pakistan.^[7] Under the direction of Salam, research in physics reached its maximum point that prompted the worldwide recognition of Pakistani physicists.^[7]

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.^[58] On the advice 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 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.^[59] 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.^[60] 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.^[61] 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.^[62]

Space programme[link]

Salam was the founder of Pakistan's space programme as he was responsible for the establishment of the space research activities in Pakistan. On September 1961, Salam approach to President Ayub Khan to led the foundation of country's first executive agency to coordinate space research.^[56] On 16 September 1961, through an executive order, the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) was established of which Salam was made its first and founder director of the agency.^[56] Salam immediately travelled to United States, where he successfully signed a space cooperation agreement with United States Government. In November 1961, NASA built Flight Test Center (FTC) in Balochistan Province. During this time, Salam visited Air Force Academy where he met with Air Commodore (Brigadier-General) Wladyslaw Turowicz — a Polish military scientist and an aerospace engineer.^[63] Turowicz was made the first technical director of the space center, and a programme of rocket testing of insued. In 1964, while in the United States, Salam visited the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and met with nuclear engineers Salim Mehmud and Tariq Mustafa.^[64] Salam signed another agreement with National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in which NASA launched a programme to provide training to Pakistan's scientists and engineers.^[64] Both nuclear engineers returned to Pakistan in few months and were inducted in Suparco.^[56]

Nuclear weapons programme[link]

Salam knew the importance of nuclear technology in Pakistan. From the start, Salam was a central figure in Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.^[65] In 1965, Salam led the establishing of the nuclear research institute—Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology.^[66] In 1965, the plutonium reactor Pakistan Atomic Research Reactor went critical under the leadership of Salam.^[65] In 1973, Salam proposed the idea of establishing the annual college in order to promote the scientific activities in the country to the Chairman of PAEC, Munir Ahmad Khan, who wholeheartedly accepted and fully supported this 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 Pakistani 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 according to Bhutto's advice, Salam went to United States to evade the 1971 Indo-Pak winter war.^[67] In 1971, Salam had travelled to the United States and returned to Pakistan with literature about the Manhattan Project.^[68] In 1972, the Government of Pakistan learned about the development status of the first atomic bomb completed under the Indian nuclear programme. In 20 January 1972, at the Multan meeting, Bhutto orchestrated to develop the deterrence programme.^[69] Former Prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, formed a group of scientists and engineers, which was headed by Salam.^[70] In 1972, Salam, as Science advisor to the President, had managed and participated in a secret meeting of nuclear scientists with Bhutto in Multan, which came to be known as the "Multan Meeting". At this meeting, only dr. I.H. Usmani protested whose believed was that the country had no facilities nor talent to carry out such ambitious and technologically giant project at that time, whilst Salam remained quiet^[71] Here, Bhutto entrusted Salam and appointed Munir Ahmad Khan as Chairman of the PAEC and head of the atomic bomb program, as Salam had supported Khan.^[72][73] Few months after the meeting, Salam, along with Khan and Riazuddin, met with Bhutto in his residence where the scientists briefed Bhutto about the nuclear weapons program.^[74] After the meeting, Salam established the "Theoretical Physics Group (TPG)" in PAEC. Abdus had led groundbreaking work at the TPG and was initially headed by Salam until 1974.^[75][76]

An office was set up for Salam in the Prime ministers' Secretariat by order of Bhutto.^[73] Salam immediately started to motivate and gravitate scientists to begin work with PAEC in the development of fission weapons.^[73] 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.^[77] This marked the beginning of the "Theoretical Physics Group (TPG)", reporting directly to Salam.^[78] 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.^[79] 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.^[80] 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^[81] 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.^[82]

The DTD was set up to coordinate the work of the various specialised groups of scientists and engineers working on different aspects of the atomic bomb.^[74] The word "bomb" was never used in this meeting, but the participants fully understood what was being discussed.^[74] On March 1974, Salam and Khan also established the Wah Group Scientist that was charged with the manufacturing materials, explosive lenses and triggering mechanism development of the weapon.^[83] 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.^[8] It was there that the Corps of Engineers built the Metallurgical Laboratory in Wah Cantt in 1976.^[84] Thus, the Wah Group working under the DTD was charged with the material and triggering mechanism development of the weapon.^[85] 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.^[86] In 1978, Abdus Salam with PAEC officials, paid a secret visit to China, and was an instrumental initiating the industrial nuclear cooperation between the two countries.^[71] 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.^[87]

Advocacy for science[link]

In 1964, Salam founded the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, in the North-East of Italy and served as its director until 1993.^[88] In 1974, he founded International Nathiagali Summer College (INSC) to promote science in his country.^[89] The INSC is an annual meeting of scientists from all over the world to come to Pakistan and hold discussions on different aspects of physics and science.^[89] Even today, the INSC holds an annual meetings, and Salam's pupil student Riazuddin is its director since its inception.^[90]

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.^[29] 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.^[91]

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.^[92] 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.^[93]

Although Salam had departed from Pakistan, he did not terminate his connection to Pakistan.^[94] Salam continued inviting Pakistan's scientists to ICTP, and maintained a research programme for the Pakistani scientists.^[95] 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[link]

Salam was a very private individual, who kept his public and personal lives quite separate.^[96] He married twice, and at his death, was survived by three daughters and a son by his first wife, and a son and daughter by his second, Professor Dame Louise Johnson, formerly Professor of Molecular Biophysics in Oxford.

Religion[link]

Salam was a devout Muslim and a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community^[97] who saw his religion as integral part of his scientific work. 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."^[29]

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

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.

He then said:

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.^[98]

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).^[92] Leaving Pakistan in protest was one of Salam's greatest regrets.^[99] 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.^[100]

Death[link]

The defaced grave of Abdus Salam in Rabwah

Abdus Salam died peacefully on 21 November of 1996 at the age of 70 in Oxford, England, after a long illness.^[101] His body was finally 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 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".^[102] Under Ordinance XX, Ahmadis are considered non-Muslims.^[103]

Legacy[link]

Salam's work in Pakistan has been far reaching and regarded as highly influential. Salam is remembered as his peers and students as the "father of Pakistan's school of Theoretical Physics" as well as Pakistan's science. Abdus Salam was a charismatic and an iconic figure, as much as a symbol among them of what they were working or/ researching toward in their respected field.^[73] His students, fellow scientists and engineers, remembered him as brilliant teacher, and engaging researcher who would also influence among others to do the same.^[43] His long association with the PAEC which soon followed by his leading the weapon-designing directorates in 1970s, had left influential legacy where scientists considered Salam as the "scientific father" of country's atom bomb project as well as the Pakistan's science.^[43] Salam founded the Space Research Commission of which he served its first founding director, and had the government to start the rocket testing programme in 1960s which later evolved in the starting of integrated space weapons programme in 1980s.^[43] In 1998, the Government of Pakistan issued a commemorative stamp to honour the services of Salam as part of its "Scientists of Pakistan" series.^[12] However, with Ordinance XX declaring Ahmadis non-Muslims, the government came under pressure and had it removed from circulation.^[104] Despite the immense services he had done for the Pakistan and the Government, he has been discriminated against because of his affiliation with the Ahmadiyya sect, which the Pakistan Government has denounced.^[105]

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".^[106]

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.".^[1]

In August 1996, the former chairman of PAEC and lifelong friend, Munir Ahmad Khan and met Salam in Oxford. 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.^[106] "

In Popular culture[link]

• 

  Abdus Salam at age 14, c 1940.

• 

  Abdus Salam with Pakistani intellectual Kasim Mahmood in 1986.

• Viewer.png

  Abdus Salam is seated right side of Bhutto, is attending the Multan Meeting on 20 January 1972.

Documentary film[link]

In 2010, Pakistani filmmaker and director Sabiha Sumar released a documentary film on the life and science of Abdus Salam. The film is subject to collection of donations valued to $500,000.^[107] In 2011, a second movie is planned by pilgrimfilms which will lighten the personal life of Abdus Salam. The film is set to schedule to be released in 2011.^[108]

Honours[link]

In 1997, scientists at ICTP renamed the institute as The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in the honour of Salam.^[109] Salam's services have been recognised in Pakistan, as his students have openly spoken and stressed out the importance of Science and Technology in Pakistan.

In 1999, per the recommendation of Ishfaq Ahmad, the Federal Government led the establishment of Salam Chair in Physics at the Government College University.^[110] On 22 November of 2009, the Director of Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics had gifted the original Nobel Prize Certificate original to his alma mater.^[111] In 2011, GCU's Salam Chair in Physics held a one day long conference that was attributed to Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam.^[110] 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.^[110] While covering the media converge on Salam's tribute, the News International, putted Salam as the "great Pakistan scientist".^[112]

In 1998, the Edward A. Bouchet-ICTP Institute was renamed as Edward Bouchet Abdus Salam Institute.^[113] 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.^[114]

In 2008, in an opinion, Daily Times called Salam "one of the greatest scientist Pakistan has ever produced".^[115] 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".^[116]

In the town of Vaughan, Ontario, Canada, near the headquarters of the Canadian branch of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, of which Professor Abdus Salam was a member, the community has named a street after his name. It is called Abdus Salam Street. Abdus Salam Street, on Google Maps

Additionally, there are 2 annual Abdus Salam science fairs held one in Canada, the other in the US. Each is organised as a National event for young scientists from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in an effort to motivate youth toward scientific endeavour Abdus Salam Science Fair Canada

Awards[link]

In 1979, Salam was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Glashow and Weinberg, 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.^[5] Salam received high civil and science awards from all over the world.^[117] Salam is recipient of first high civil awards — Star of Pakistan (1959) and the Nishan-e-Imtiaz (1979) — awarded both by President of Pakistan for his outstanding services to Pakistan.^[117] The National Center for Physics (NCP) contains a Abdus Salam Museum dedicated to the life of Salam and his work as he discovered and formulated the Electroweak Theory.^[7] Below is the list of awards that were conferred to Salam in his lifetime.

• 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)
• Smith's Prize (Cambridge University) (1950)
• Sitara-e-Pakistan for contribution to science in Pakistan (1959)
• Pride of Performance Medal and Award (1959)
• First recipient of Maxwell Medal and Award (Physical Society, London) (1961)
• Hughes Medal (Royal Society, London) (1964)
• Atoms for Peace Award (Atoms for Peace Foundation) (1968)
• J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Medal and Prize (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 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)

Awards named after Salam[link]

The Abdus Salam Award (also called as Salam Prize) is an award in natural and physical sciences, established to recognised the high achievements and contributions in physical and natural sciences.^[118] In 1979, Riazuddin, Fayyazuddin and Asghar Qadir met with Salam, and presented the idea of creating an award to appreciate scientists, resident in Pakistan, in their respective fields.^[118] Salam had donated the money he had won as he felt that he had no rightly use of the prize money.^[100] It was endowed by Asghar Qadir, Riazuddin and Fayyazuddin in 1980, and it was first awarded in 1981. The winners are selected by a committee (consisted of Aghar Qadir, Fayyazuddin, Riazuddin, and others) of the Center for Advanced Mathematics and Physics (CAMP), which administers the award.^[100]

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.^[119]

Contributions[link]

Salam's primary focus was research on the physics of elementary particles. His particular contributions included:

• two-component neutrino theory and the prediction of the inevitable parity violation in weak interaction;
• gauge unification of weak and electromagnetic interactions, the unified force is called the "Electroweak" force, a name given to it by Salam, and which forms the basis of the Standard Model in particle physics;
• predicted existence of weak neutral currents and W particles and Z particles before their experimental discovery;^[120]
• symmetry properties of elementary particles; unitary symmetry;
• renormalisation of meson theories;
• gravity theory and its role in particle physics; two tensor theory of gravity and strong interaction physics;
• unification of electroweak with strong nuclear forces, grand unification theory;
• related prediction of proton-decay;
• Pati-Salam model, a grand unification theory;
• Supersymmetry theory, in particular formulation of Superspace and formalism of superfields in 1974;
• the theory of supermanifolds, as a geometrical framework for understanding supersymmetry, in 1974;^[121]
• Supergeometry, the geometric basis for supersymmetry, in 1974;^[122]
• application of the Higgs mechanism to the electroweak symmetry breaking;
• prediction of the magnetic photon in 1966;^[48]

Institutes named after Abdus Salam[link]

• Abdus Salam National Center for Mathematics (ASNCM), Government College University, Lahore, Pakistan. [1]
• Abdus Salam Chair in Physics (ASCP), Government College University, Lahore, Pakistan. [2]
• Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy.
• Abdus Salam School for Mathematical Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan [3]
• The Edward Bouchet Abdus Salam Institute (EBASI)

See also[link]

	History of science portal
	Nuclear technology portal
	Physics portal

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Abdus Salam

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Abdus Salam

• 1979 Nobel Prize Distribution Ceremony – Video
• Documentary Film on the Science and Life of Dr. Abdus Salam
• Pakistan’s contribution to the LHC (Large Hadron Collider)
• An Interview – Part 1 of 4
• An Interview – Part 2 of 4
• An interview – Part 3 of 4
• An Interview – Part 4 of 4
• A short clip of Professor Dr. Abdus Salam delivering a scientific lecture
• The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics
• Abdus Salam: Nobel Laureate Par Excellence [contains photos and hand-written notes from family archives]
• Abdus Salam bio on Nobel site
• The Nobel Prize in Physics 1979 [4]
• The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics [5]
• Personalia at the ICTP Library [6]
• TWAS, formerly Third World Academy of Sciences [7]
• Abdus Salam CV [8] / [9]
• Islam and Science: Concordance or Conflict?, speech delivered to UNESCO, 27 April 1984.
• COMSATS Secretariat
• COMSATS
• National Centre For Physics (NCP)
• Biography of Abdus Salam by Imperial College colleague [10]
• An Interesting And Detailed Article On the Life of Dr. Abdus Salam In Urdu
• PBS documentary on strings, contains clip of award ceremony with Abdus Salam
• Salam +50 Conference at Imperial College
• CNBC Pakistan televised Interview with Dr. Salim Mehmud – Chairman SUPARCO-Available in Urdu Language
• Contributions of Professor Abdus Salam as member of PAEC
• A full biography: 'Cosmic Anger, Abdus Salam- the First Muslim Nobel Scientist' [ISBN 978-0-19-920846-3]
• Abdus Salam Movie – The Dream of Symmetry