Abdus Salam

Who was Abdus Salam?

Mohammad Abdus Salam, NI, SPk, KBE was a theoretical physicist who, when he shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contribution to electroweak unification, became the first and the only Pakistani to receive a Nobel Prize and the first Muslim to win a Nobel Prize in science.

Salam was a science advisor to the Government of Pakistan from 1960 to 1974, a position from which he played a major and influential role in Pakistan's science infrastructure. Salam was responsible for not only major development and contribution in theoretical and particle physics, but as well as promoting scientific research to maximum levels in his country. Salam was the founding director of Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission, and responsible for the establishment of the Theoretical Physics Group in Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. As Science Advisor, Salam played an integral role in Pakistan's development of peaceful use of nuclear energy, and directed the research on development of atomic bomb project of Pakistan in 1972; for this, he is viewed as the "scientific father" of this programme in the views of the scientists who researched under his scientific umbrella. In 1974, Abdus Salam departed from his country, in protest, after the Pakistan Parliament passed a controversial parliamentary bill declaring the Ahmadiyya denomination as non-Islamic. Even after his death, Salam remained one of the most influential scientists in his country. In 1998, following the country's nuclear tests, the Government of Pakistan issued a commemorative stamp, as a part of "Scientists of Pakistan", to honour the services of Salam.