Abdus Salam

Biography

Youth and education

Abdus Salam was born on 29 January 1926 in Jhang in the Punjab Province of British India (present day in Pakistan) into a Punjabi family professing Ahmadiyya. He belonged to the Muslim Rajput community, his son Ahmad Salam later recounted that he would tell him stories of Rajput cultural history "of which he was very proud". Jagjit Singh, in his biography of Salam, says that his family traditionally traced its genealogy back to a Rajput prince named Buddahn who converted to Islam at the hands of a Sufi preacher and later founded the city of Jhang around the year 1160. Salam was the son of Chaudhary Muhammad Hussain, a school teacher of Jhang and Hajirah who belonged to Faizullah Chak near Batala.

The name Choudhary Muhammad Hussain gave his son was Abd al-Salam which means "Servant of God". Abd means servant and Salam is one of the 99 names of God in the Qur'an. In English, his name is usually transliterated as Abdus Salam, which should be understood as a single given name. His father followed the custom of not giving a surname. Later in his life he added Mohammad to his name.

Salam established an early reputation in Punjab for outstanding academic performance. At the age of 14 (it was in 1940), he scored the highest marks ever recorded for the entrance examination of the Punjab University, earning a full scholarship to the Government College of Lahore. Instead of moving to Lahore immediately, he remained in Jhang and studied for two years at Government Intermediate College. In 1942, he passed his FA examinations with the highest scores in the province.

In 1942, Salam moved to Lahore to study at Government College. As a fourth-year student, he published an elegant solution for a mathematical problem originally studied by Srinivasa Ramanujan. In 1944, his mathematics exam results set a new Punjab record. Salam also excelled in Urdu and English literature, which could have led him to pursue further studies in English. However, on the recommendation of a mentor, he chose to continue with an M.A. in mathematics.

At his father's urging, Salam attempted to enter the Indian Civil Service (ICS), considered the most prestigious career path for young graduates. He applied to the Indian Railways but was rejected after failing the medical optical tests; examiners also ruled that he was too young to qualify. Salam remained in Lahore, completing his M.A. in mathematics at Government College in 1946 with record marks.

Academic career

After receiving his doctorate in 1951, Salam returned to Lahore at the Government College University as a professor of mathematics, where he remained till 1954. In 1952, he was appointed professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics at the neighbouring University of the Punjab. In the latter capacity, Salam sought to update the university curriculum, introducing a course in quantum mechanics. He began to supervise the education of students who were particularly influenced by him. As a result, Riazuddin remained the only student of Salam who had the privilege to study under Salam at the undergraduate and post-graduate level in Lahore, and post-doctoral level in Cambridge University. In 1953, Salam was unable to establish a research institute in Lahore, as he faced strong opposition from his peers. Salam went back to Cambridge and joined St John's College. During 1957, his tenure at Imperial College, London started. As time passed, this department became one of the prestigious research departments that included well known physicists such as Steven Weinberg, Tom Kibble, Gerald Guralnik, C. R. Hagen, Riazuddin, and John Ward.

At Cambridge and Imperial College he formed a group of theoretical physicists, the majority of whom were his Pakistani students. At age 33, Salam became one of the youngest persons to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1959. Salam took a fellowship at Princeton University in 1959, where he met with J. Robert Oppenheimer and to whom he presented his research work on neutrinos. Oppenheimer and Salam discussed the foundation of electrodynamics, problems and their solution. His dedicated personal assistant was Jean Bouckley. In 1980, Salam became a foreign fellow of the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences.

Scientific career

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

Salam had a prolific research career in theoretical and high-energy physics. Salam had worked on the neutrino with his chiral symmetry. Salam later passed his work to Riazuddin, who made pioneering contributions in neutrinos. In 1962, Salam published his theoretical work on the vector meson. In 1961, Salam began to work with John Clive Ward on symmetries and electroweak unification. Together with Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow, Salam formulated the mathematical concept of their work.

In 1966, Salam carried out work on the magnetic monopole.

In 1972, Salam began to work with Indian-American theoretical physicist Jogesh Pati. This led to the development of Pati–Salam model in particle physics.

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". Salam took the Nobel Prize medal to the house of his former professor, Anilendra Ganguly, who taught him at the Sanatan Dharma College in Lahore, and placed the medal around his neck, stating "Mr Anilendra Ganguly this medal is a result of your teaching and love of mathematics that you instilled in me". Only one known official replica of the Nobel Prize Medal was ever produced by the Mint of Pakistan in 1979/80. This medal has a large test cut and damage from two to three o'clock. The replica medal was sold at auction to an unknown bidder on April 23, 2025. In the 1970s Salam continued trying to unify forces by including the strong interaction in a Grand Unified Theory.

Government work

In 1961 he approached President Khan to set up the country's first national space agency, thus on 16 September 1961 the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission was established, with Salam as its first director.

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

While in the IAEA, Salam had consulted about the establishment of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), a research physics institution, in Trieste, Italy. Salam obtained permission from President Ayub Khan to set up the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant.

Space programme

In early 1961, Salam approached President Khan to lay the foundations of Pakistan's first executive agency to co-ordinate space research. By executive order on 16 September 1961 the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) was established with Salam founding director.

Nuclear weapons programme

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

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

In November 1971, Salam met with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in his residence, and following Bhutto's advice, went to the United States to avoid the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. Salam travelled to the US and returned to Pakistan with scientific literature about the Manhattan Project, and calculations involving atomic bombs. On 20 January 1972, Salam, as Science Advisor to the president of Pakistan, managed and participated in a secret meeting of nuclear scientists with former prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in Multan, known as the 'Multan Meeting'. At the meeting, only I. H. Usmani protested, believing that the country had neither the facilities or talent to carry out such an ambitious and technologically demanding project, whilst Salam remained quiet. Here, Bhutto entrusted Salam and appointed Munir Khan as Chairman of PAEC, and head of the atomic bomb program, as Salam had supported Khan. A few months after the meeting, Salam, Khan, and Riazuddin, met with Bhutto in his residence where the scientists briefed him about the nuclear weapons program. After the meeting, Salam established the 'Theoretical Physics Group' (TPG) in PAEC. Salam led groundbreaking work at TPG until 1974.

Advocacy for science

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

In 1997, the scientists at ICTP commemorated Salam and renamed ICTP as the "Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics". 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.

In 1979, Salam said: Physicists believed there are four fundamental forces of nature; the gravitational force, the weak and strong nuclear force, and the electromagnetic force. Salam was a firm believer that "scientific thought is the common heritage of mankind", and that developing nations needed to help themselves, and invest in their own scientists to boost development and reduce the gap between the Global South and the Global North, thus contributing to a more peaceful world.

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

Although Salam left Pakistan, he did not terminate his connection to home.

Personal life

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

Religion

Salam was an Ahmadi Muslim, who saw his religion as a fundamental part of his scientific work. He once wrote that "the Holy Quran enjoins us to reflect on the verities of Allah's created laws of nature; however, that our generation has been privileged to glimpse a part of His design is a bounty and a grace for which I render thanks with a humble heart." During his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Physics, Salam quoted verses from the Quran and stated:

"Thou seest not, in the creation of the All-merciful any imperfection, Return thy gaze, seest thou any fissure? Then Return thy gaze, again and again. Thy gaze, Comes back to thee dazzled, aweary." (67:3–4)

This, in effect, is the faith of all physicists; the deeper we seek, the more is our wonder excited, the more is the dazzlement for our gaze.

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

Death

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

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

Legacy

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

Ghulam Murtaza, a student of Salam, wrote:

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

Ishfaq Ahmad, a lifelong friend of Salam recalls:

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

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

Documentaries on Abdus Salam

Salam – the film

LLC started formally researching and developing a film on the science and life of Abdus Salam in 2004, two years after the producers had conceived of the idea. A fundraising teaser was released by Kailoola Productions to coincide with Salam's birth anniversary on 29 January 2017. The post-production phase of this documentary film, pending funding, is estimated at US$150,000. The film Salam: The First ****** Nobel Laureate, directed by the Indian-American documentary filmmaker Anand Kamalakar, was announced in 2018 and released on Netflix in October 2019.

Abdus Salam

Pilgrim Films released The Dream of Symmetry in September 2011. Their press release describes it as presenting "the extraordinary figure of Abdus Salam, who not only was an outstanding scientist but also a generous humanitarian and a valuable person. His rich and busy life was an endless quest for symmetry, that he pursued in the universe of physical laws and in the world of human beings."

Honours

Dr. Salam's genius was like a magic... And there was always an element of eastern mysticism in his ideas that left one wondering how to fathom his genius...

Salam was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1971, the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1979, and the American Philosophical Society in 1992. While covering the media converge on Salam's tribute, The News International, referred to Salam as the "great Pakistan scientist".

In 1998, the Edward A. Bouchet-ICTP Institute was renamed as the Edward Bouchet Abdus Salam Institute. Since 2003, Government College University has the Abdus Salam School of Mathematical Sciences.

That it has taken nearly four decades for this country to honour a globally renowned scientist who was one of its own, is a sad reflection of the priorities that hold sway here... For Dr Salam was an Ahmadi, a persecuted minority in Pakistan, and his faith rather than his towering achievements was the yardstick by which he was judged. In 2008, in an opinion piece, Daily Times called Salam "one of the greatest scientists Pakistan has ever produced".

In 2015, the Academy of Young Researchers and Scholars, Lahore, renamed its library as the "Abdus Salam Library". In the town of Vaughan, Ontario, Canada, near the headquarters of the Canadian branch of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, of which Abdus Salam was a member, the community has named a street after him, 'Abdus Salam Street', while at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland there is 'Route Salam'. Additionally, there are two annual Abdus Salam science fairs, one held in Canada and 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.

On 6 December 2016, Pakistan's prime minister Nawaz Sharif approved the renaming of Quaid-i-Azam University's (QAU) physics centre to the Professor Abdus Salam Center for Physics. It was also announced that the Professor Abdus Salam Fellowship will be established, which will include five annual fully funded Pakistani PhD students in the field of Physics in "leading international universities".

Awards and recognition

In 1979, Salam was awarded a third of 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. Salam received high civil and science awards from all over the world. Salam is recipient of first high civil awards – Star of Pakistan. Below is the list of awards that were conferred to Salam in his lifetime.

Awards named after Salam

The Abdus Salam Award (also called the Salam Prize) is an award established to recognise high achievements and contributions in physical and natural sciences. Salam donated the money he had won. It was created 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, and Riazuddin, and others. The Abdus Salam Medal is presented by the Third World Academy of Sciences. It was first given in 1995. The Abdus Salam Shield of Honor in Mathematics was initiated by the National Mathematical Society of Pakistan to promote and recognize quality research in Mathematics in 2015. It was awarded for the first time in 2016.

Contributions

Salam's primary focus was research on the physics of elementary particles. His particular numerous groundbreaking 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 the existence of weak neutral currents, and W and Z bosons, before their experimental discovery

symmetry properties of elementary particles; unitary symmetry;

renormalization 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;

Supergeometry, the geometric basis for supersymmetry, in 1974;

application of the Higgs mechanism to 'electroweak symmetry breaking';

Institutes named after Abdus Salam and other named entities

Abdus Salam Centre for Physics (Department of Physics), Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan

Abdus Salam National Centre for Mathematics (ASNCM), Government College University, Lahore, Pakistan.

Abdus Salam Chair in Physics (ASCP), Government College University, Lahore, Pakistan.

Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy.

Abdus Salam School of Mathematical Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan

The Edward Bouchet Abdus Salam Institute (EBASI)

Abdus Salam Library at Imperial College London