Abdus Salam

Mohammad Abdus Salam (29 January 1926 – 21 November 1996) was a Pakistani theoretical physicist, born in Jhang, Punjab, in British India into a family professing Ahmadiyya, who died in Oxford, England. He shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the theory unifying the electromagnetic and weak forces — the first Pakistani to win a Nobel Prize and the first Muslim Nobel laureate in science. He founded the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste in 1964 and Pakistan's space agency SUPARCO, and left his country in protest in 1974 after its parliament declared members of the Ahmadiyya community non-Muslim. ^{1 2}

Salam was born in Jhang, Punjab, into an Ahmadi family; his father, Chaudhary Muhammad Hussain, was a schoolteacher and his mother was Hajirah, and the family traced its descent to a Rajput prince who had converted to Islam. His early brilliance was striking: in 1940, aged fourteen, he recorded the highest marks ever achieved in the Punjab University matriculation examination. He moved to Lahore in 1942 to study at Government College, published a solution to a problem of Ramanujan's while still a student, and took his MA in mathematics in 1946 with record marks. ¹

He won a scholarship to St John's College, Cambridge, where he took a double first in mathematics and physics in 1949 and the Smith's Prize in 1950, then completed his PhD in theoretical physics under Nicholas Kemmer with a thesis on developments in the quantum theory of fields; his early work addressed a renormalisation problem that had resisted leading physicists. ^{1 2}

Salam returned to Lahore as professor of mathematics at Government College (1951–1954) and head of mathematics at the University of the Punjab, then went back to Cambridge, and in 1957 moved to Imperial College London, where he was among the first Asians to hold a full professorship at a British university; he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1959, aged thirty-three. ¹

He served as science adviser to the Government of Pakistan from 1960 to 1974, founded the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) in 1961 as its founding director, established the Theoretical Physics Group in the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, and is described as the scientific father of Pakistan's atomic programme, launched as Project-706 in 1972. ¹

In 1964 he founded the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, as a home for scientists from the developing world, directing it until December 1993, and in 1983 he founded the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). The ICTP awards an annual Spirit of Abdus Salam Award to staff who embody his dedication to science in the developing world. ^{1 2 3}

Salam's work centred on the unification of nature's forces: he contributed deeply to the theory uniting the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces into a single electroweak force, developed the Pati–Salam model with Jogesh Pati in 1974, and contributed to neutrino theory, supersymmetry and other areas of particle physics, in a style influenced by Paul Dirac. ¹

He received the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with Sheldon Glashow and Steven 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." After winning, he took his medal to his former teacher Anilendra Ganguly in Lahore and placed it around his neck. His honours include the Sitara-e-Pakistan (1959), the Hughes Medal (1964), the Atoms for Peace Prize (1968), the Royal Medal (1978), the Nishan-e-Imtiaz (1979), the Lomonosov Gold Medal (1983) and the Copley Medal (1990); Pakistan issued a "Scientists of Pakistan" stamp in his honour in 1998. ¹

Nicholas Kemmer supervised his doctorate at Cambridge; Riazuddin was among his leading students, to whom he passed his neutrino work; and Jogesh Pati was his partner in the Pati–Salam model. The museum does not yet hold separate records for these people, so they are named here in the text without links; his residence and study in Lahore are recorded as relations in the record's data. ¹

This section sets out different positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum.

Salam was born into a family professing Ahmadiyya and grew up a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community; the sources describe him as a devout man who regarded his religion as fundamental to his scientific work. In 1974 Pakistan's parliament unanimously declared members of the Ahmadiyya community to be non-Muslim, and Salam left the country in protest and lived in exile. ^{1 2}

After his death he was buried in the Bahishti Maqbara cemetery in Rabwah, Pakistan, next to his parents. His tombstone originally read "First Muslim Nobel Laureate"; the word "Muslim" was later obscured on the orders of a local magistrate, leaving "First Nobel Laureate". The museum records these events exactly as the sources report them and takes no position in the dispute over his faith. ¹

Salam married Amtul Hafeez Begum in 1949 and Louise Johnson in 1968, and had six children. This museum does not publish family details beyond what is needed to understand his work. ¹

Salam died in Oxford on 21 November 1996, aged seventy, after a long illness; his body was flown to Pakistan, where some 30,000 people attended his funeral prayers, and he was buried in Rabwah. His legacy lives in electroweak theory, in the ICTP — which still hosts scientists from across the developing world — and in his standing as the first Pakistani, and the first Muslim, Nobel laureate in science. ^{1 3}

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