User:Aamri2/Mohammad Abdus Salam

Mohammad Abdus Salam
Born	(1926-01-29)January 29, 1926 Jhang-Maghiana, India
Died	November 21, 1996(1996-11-21) (aged 70) Oxford, England
Nationality	Pakistani
Occupation	Physicist
Notable work	Electroweak theory, neutrino

Mohammad Abdus Salam (29 January 1926 – 21 November 1996) was a Pakistani physicist. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979.

Notable Works

Salam won the Nobel Prize alongside Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Lee Glashow for his formulation of electroweak theory, which unified the theories of the electromagnetic force and the weak force. This theory is essential to the Standard Model and led to further discoveries, such as that of the Higgs boson. He also developed the theory of the neutrino based on Pauli's postulation in 1930.

History

Salam was born in 1926 to his father, an official in the local Department of Education. He was favoured by his father, who believed him to be the result of Friday prayers, and as such he was exempt from chores to focus on his exceptional mathematical skills. At the age of 14, he scored the highest marks ever recorded in the University of Punjab's Matriculation Exam, winning a scholarship to Government College, where he received his M.A. in 1946. In the same year, he was awarded a scholarship to St. John's College in Cambridge, from which he received his B.A. in mathematics and physics in 1949.

In 1952, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in theoretical physics. He returned to Pakistan as a professor of mathematics until 1954, when he decided to leave following riots targeting Ahmadi Muslims. Salam was a devout Ahmadi Muslim, for whom scientific inquiry was a religious experience. He went to Cambridge once more as a lecturer of mathematics, and then became a professor of theoretical physics at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London in 1957.

In 1961, Salam established Pakistan's space program, and then in 1964 he founded the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Italy to support physicists from developing countries. He conducted his Nobel Prize-winning research on electroweak theory in the 1960s at the Imperial College of Science and Technology. His conclusion was also reached by two other scientists, Weinberg and Glashow, through different means.

In the early 1970s, Salam became involved in Pakistan's efforts to build a nuclear weapon, but after the government declared Ahmadi Muslims non-Muslims and began persecuting them, Salam stopped this work and went on to denounce nuclear weapons. He won the Nobel Prize in 1979, becoming the first Pakistani and the first Muslim to win a Nobel Prize, but in Pakistan, he was not recognized for this achievement, with his gravestone being defaced after his death in 1996.

Lack of Recognition

While Salam is definitely in need of greater recognition here (though his contributions may be beyond the scope of the Ontario curriculum), his true erasure lies in his home country of Pakistan, where Ahmadi Muslims are considered non-Muslims and as such are deprived of certain rights. His grave, which described him as the first Muslim Nobel Prize laureate, had the word "Muslim" whited out. He is certainly deserving of more recognition, and Pakistanis should be more appreciative of his work, especially as a representative of the country.

References

Beall, A. (2019, October 14). Abdus Salam: The Muslim Science Genius Forgotten by history. BBC Culture. Retrieved June 6, 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20191014-abdus-salam-the-muslim-science-genius-forgotten-by-history

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopedia. (2022, January 25). Abdus Salam. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved June 6, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abdus-Salam

Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2022. (2022, January 5). Abdus Salam - Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Retrieved June 6, 2022, from https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1979/salam/biographical/

See Also

• Hertha Sponer
• Hideki Yukawa
• James A. Harris
• Satyendra Nath Bose
• Lise Meitner