Mohammad Abdus Salam, was a theoretical physicist who, when he shared the 1979 award for his contribution to electroweak unification, became the first Pakistani and to receive a Nobel Prize in Physics.
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 at maximum level in his country.[7] Salam was the founding director of Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO), and responsible for the establishment of the Theoretical Physics Group (TPG) in Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC). 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.
Salam's major and notable achievements include the Pati–Salam model, magnetic photon, vector meson, Grand Unified Theory, work on supersymmetry and, most importantly, electroweak theory, for which he was awarded the most prestigious award in Physics – the Nobel Prize.[5] Salam made a major contribution in Quantum Field Theory and advancement of Mathematics at Imperial College London. With his student, Riazuddin, Salam made important contributions 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. As a teacher and science promoter, Salam is remembered as a founder and scientific father of mathematical and theoretical physics in Pakistan during his term as the chief scientific advisor to the president. Salam heavily contributed to the rise of Pakistani physics to the Physics community in the world. Even until his death, Salam continued to contribute to physics and tirelessly advocated for the development of science in Third-W
Salam was a very private individual, who kept his public and personal lives quite separate. He married twice, and at his death, 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. He married Johnson in 1968 in London.
Death
Abdus Salam died peacefully on 21 November 1996 at the age of 70 in Oxford, England, after a long illness. His body was finally 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 Community at Rabwah, Punjab, Pakistan, next to his parents' graves. The epitaph on his tomb initially read "First Pakistani Nobel Laureate". The word "Muslim" was later erased on the orders of a local magistrate, leaving the nonsensical "First [][][][][][] Nobel Laureate", cf. picture of his grave on the right. Under Ordinance XX, <url=http://www.thepersecution.org/50years/paklaw.html | title=Government of Pakistan – Law for Ahmadis | accessdate=6 March 2011}}</ref> Being an Ahmadiyya, he was considered a non-Muslim according to the definition provided in the II Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan. Later in years, his tombstone was further vandalized leaving his name only.
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