Abdus Salam
Salam, Abdus (1926-1996) was a Pakistani physicist. He won a share of the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics for his contributions in developing a theory that unifies the weak nuclear force within atoms and the force of electromagnetism. He was the first Pakistani and the first Muslim to win a Nobel Prize. Salam shared the prize with American physicists Sheldon Lee Glashow and Steven Weinberg, who each independently did similar work.
Salam was born on Jan. 29, 1926, in Jhang Maghiana in the province of Punjab, which was part of India at that time. He earned an M.A. degree in mathematics from Government College, then affiliated with Punjab University, in 1946. He then received a three-year scholarship to study at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. He studied at the university's St. John's College and earned a B.A. degree in mathematics in 1948.
With one year of his Cambridge scholarship remaining, Salam met with his faculty advisor, the British astronomer Fred Hoyle, and explained that he wanted to become a theoretical physicist. Hoyle recommended that Salam spend the year taking undergraduate physics courses, which included research in the university's Cavendish Laboratory, so that he would acquire important fundamental knowledge in experimental physics. Salam followed Hoyle's advice and earned a B.A. degree in physics in 1949.
In 1949, Salam began graduate work in theoretical physics. He completed the work for his dissertation in 1950 but, because of certain university rules, was not allowed to submit it until 1952. That year, he received his Ph.D. degree in theoretical physics.
In 1951, Salam did a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He then returned to Pakistan the same year and became professor at Government College and head of the mathematics department at the University of Punjab.
Salam went back to Cambridge in 1954 as a lecturer in mathematics. He left his position at Cambridge that year to become professor of theoretical physics at the University of London's Imperial College of Science and Technology, where he remained the rest of his career.
Salam's work focused on subatomic particles, units of matter smaller than an atom. Subatomic particles interact with one another mainly through three fundamental forces: (1) the strong nuclear force, (2) electromagnetism, and (3) the weak nuclear force. In the 1950's, Salam began searching for a way to show mathematically that electromagnetism and the weak force are actually two aspects of the same force. He described the relationship of these two forces in the electroweak theory, which he completed in the early 1970's. At about the same time, Glashow and Weinberg also had been working independently on developing the electroweak theory. Thus, all three scientists were recognized for this accomplishment. Other scientists confirmed the electroweak theory and its predictions through experiments in the 1970's and in the 1980's.
From 1961 to 1974, Salam was chief scientific adviser to the president of Pakistan. In 1964, Salam set up the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), now called the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, in Trieste, Italy. Its purpose was to help foster the growth of advanced study and research by scientists in developing countries. The center gained funding from UNESCO and other international organizations, and today it remains an important resource for scientists from developing countries. Salam was director of the ICTP from 1964 to 1993.
Salam published the book Symmetry Concepts in Modern Physics in 1966. Throughout his career, he also wrote more than 200 articles for scientific journals. Some of these were collected in the book Selected Papers of Abdus Salam, published in 1994.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Salam received many other honors and awards. They include the Pride of Performance Award in Pakistan in 1959; the Maxwell Medal from the Physical Society in London in 1961; the Hughes Medal in 1964, the Royal Medal in 1978, and the Copley Medal in 1990, all from the Royal Society of the United Kingdom; the Atoms for Peace Award in 1968; the Guthrie Medal of the Institute of Physics in London in 1976; the John Torrence Tate Medal of the American Institute of Physics in 1978; and the Lomonosov Gold Medal of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1983.