(Originally published in 1972, the twelve articles in this...)
Originally published in 1972, the twelve articles in this volume discuss various aspects of quantum mechanics that owe their origin to the work of P. A. M. Dirac. Each of the distinguished contributors reviews Dirac's work and discusses its development in some detail. Since Dirac's work ranged widely, the resulting volume constitutes a valuable survey of the state of quantum mechanics. A small part of the book contains personal reminiscences of Dirac in Cambridge and of his early visits to the USA and gives a historical account of the development of quantum mechanics during the decade 1924-1933, aptly termed 'the golden age of theoretical physics'.
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1972
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1990
Ethnicity:
Salam was born into a Punjabi Muslim family that was part of the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam. In terms of caste-affiliation, they were Jats of Rajput descent from Jhang on his father's side, his mother was a Kakazai from Gurdaspur.
Abdus Salam was born on 29 January 1926 in Jhang, Punjab, British India (now Punjab, Pakistan) to Hajira and Muhammed Hussain. Salam’s father worked for the local department of education.
At the age of sixteen, Abdus Salam entered the Government College at Punjab University in Lahore, and, in 1946, he was awarded his Master’s Degree in mathematics. Salam then received a scholarship that allowed him to enroll at St. John’s College at Cambridge University, where he was awarded a Bachelor’s Degree in mathematics and physics, with highest honors, in 1949. Three years later he received his doctor's degree in theoretical physics.
Accepting a joint appointment as professor of mathematics at the Government College of Lahore and head of the department of mathematics at Punjab University, Salam soon discovered that he had no opportunity to conduct research.
As a result, Salam decided to return to Cambridge. He taught mathematics for two years there and, in 1957, was appointed professor of theoretical physics at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London. He had held that post ever since.
Beginning in the mid-1950s, Salam turned his attention to one of the fundamental questions of modern physics, the unification of forces. Scientists recognize that there are four fundamental forces governing nature—the gravitational, electromagnetic, strong, and weak forces—and, that all four may be manifestations of a single basic force. The unity of forces would not actually be observable, they believe, except at energy levels much greater than those that exist in the everyday world, energy levels that currently exist only in cosmic radiation and in the most powerful of particle accelerators.
Attempts to prove unification theories are, to some extent, theoretical exercises involving esoteric mathematical formulations. In the 1960s, three physicists, Salam, Steven Weinberg, and Sheldon Glashow, independently derived a mathematical theory that unifies two of the four basic forces, the electromagnetic and weak forces. A powerful point of confirmation in this work was the fact that essentially the same theory was produced starting from two very different beginning points and following two different lines of reasoning.
One of the predictions arising from the new electroweak theory was the existence of previously unknown weak “neutral currents,” as anticipated by Salam and Weinberg. These currents were first observed in 1973 during experiments conducted at the CERN in Geneva, and later at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. A second prediction, the existence of force-carrying particles designated as W + , W-, and Z0 bosons was verified in a later series of experiments also carried out at CERN in 1983.
Theoretical physics has been only one of Salam’s two great passions in life. The other has been an on-going concern for the status of theoretical physicists in Third World nations. His own experience in Pakistan has been a lifelong reminder of the need for encouragement, instruction, and assistance for others like himself growing up in developing nations. His concern drove Salam to recommend the establishment of a training center for such individuals. That dream was realized in 1964 with the formation of the ICTP (International Centre for Theoretical Physics) in Trieste, Italy, which invites outstanding theoretical physicists to teach and lecture aspiring students on their own areas of expertise. Salam has also served as a member of Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Commission (from 1958 to 1974) and its Science Council (from 1963 to 1975), as Chief Scientific Advisor to Pakistan's President (from 1961 to 1974) and as chairman of the country’s Space and Upper Atmosphere Committee (from 1962 to 1963).
Salam, director of ICTP since its founding, has been involved in a host of other international activities linking scientists to each other and to a variety of governmental agencies. He was a member (from 1964 to 1975) and chairman (from 1971 to 1972) of the United Nations Advisory Committee on Science and Technology, vice president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (from 1972 to 1978), and a member of the Scientific Council of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (from 1970).
Concerning Salam's ambiguous role in Pakistan's own integrated atomic bomb project, he had been a great advocate for that project from 1972 to 1973. He subsequently took a stance against it after he fell out with Bhutto over the issue of the Ahmaddiya denomination as non-Islamic.
In 1965, Salam led the establishing of the nuclear research institute—Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology.
Salam is remembered by his peers and students as the "father of Pakistan's school of Theoretical Physics" as well as Pakistan's science.
During his scientific career, Salam received more than two dozen honorary doctorates and won more than a dozen major awards, such as the Atoms for Peace Award for 1968, the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 1978, the John Torrence Tate Medal of the American Institute of Physics in 1978, and the Lomonosov Gold Medal of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences in 1983.
Salam was the first Pakistani and the first Muslim to receive a Nobel Prize in science and the second from an Islamic country to receive any Nobel Prize.
His notable achievements include the Pati–Salam model, magnetic photon, vector meson, Grand Unified Theory, and work on supersymmetry.
With his colleagues Glashow and Weinberg, Salam had been honored with the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics, for their contributions to the electroweak theory.
Salam made a major contribution in quantum field theory and in the advancement of Mathematics at Imperial College London.
In addition, Salam made a great contribution 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.
LLC started a film on the science and life of Abdus Salam in 2004.
Pilgrim Films released "The Dream of Symmetry" in September 2011.
In 1997, scientists at ICTP renamed the institute as The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in the honour of Salam.
In 1998, the Edward A. Bouchet-ICTP Institute was renamed as Edward Bouchet Abdus Salam Institute.
In 2003, Government of Punjab created the institute of excellence for the Mathematical Sciences, Abdus Salam School of Mathematical Sciences.
Several awards were named after Salam.
(Originally published in 1972, the twelve articles in this...)
1972(This is an expanded version of the third Dirac Memorial L...)
Salam was a member of Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Salam was a very private individual, he kept his public and personal lives quite separate.
Quotes from others about the person
"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..." - Masud Ahmad
"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."
Salam was married twice. First, he married a cousin. 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 in Oxford University. Two of his daughters are - Anisa Bushra Salam Bajwa and Aziza Rahman.
