Abdus Salam
Physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics 1979 for electroweak unification
Born 1926 · Died 1996
Photo: Molendijk, Bart / Anefo · CC BY-SA 3.0 nl
«Scientific thought and its creation is the common and shared heritage of mankind.»
Abdus Salam showed that electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force are two aspects of a single interaction, one of the great unifications in physics. He was the first Muslim and the first Pakistani to win a Nobel Prize in science.
Key achievements
- Nobel Prize in Physics, 1979, for electroweak unification
- Founded the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste
- First Muslim and first Pakistani science Nobel laureate
Universities
London, South Kensington
Professor of theoretical physics from 1957, where he founded one of the world's leading theory groups.
Cambridge, England
Took his degree at St John's College and a PhD in theoretical physics in 1952.
Facts
- He founded the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste so that physicists from poor countries could do research without emigrating.
- He scored the highest marks ever recorded in the Punjab University entrance examination, and the whole town turned out to greet him.
- He was declared a non-Muslim in Pakistan in 1974 because of his Ahmadi faith, and the word Muslim was later chiselled off his gravestone.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.