Augustine Pamplany CST
Abdus Salam is a Pakistani Physicist who was the first Muslim to receive a Nobel Prize in Science. He received the Nobel Prize in 1979, along with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Lee Glashow, for their contributions in developing the electroweak theory. This theory explains the weak nuclear force in relation to electromagnetism. His findings prepared the ground for the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, nick named as God particle. He was the first Pakistani to receive a Nobel Prize.
He received his Ph. D in theoretical physics from Cambridge University. He had been working in Pakistan as a Professor of Mathematics from 1951 to 1954 and went back to Cambridge as a professor of theoretical physics. He also helped found the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Italy, which supports the physicists from the third world.
He was a firm believer in God and a very practicing Muslim. He took Quran seriously and said the traditional prayers five times a day. For the Muslim students, he led the Friday community prayers at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics. He belonged to the sect of Ahmadiyya Muslims whose faith is not compatible with the teachings of the mainstream Islam. Thus he had to encounter a lot of difficulties in Pakistan from the religious and political leaders. Ahmadiyyas were declared non-Muslims in Pakistan in 1976. Though Salam’s gravestone carried the title, the first Muslim Nobel Laureate, the authorities later on scrubbed out the epithet ‘Muslim’ from it.
His scientific career was committed to developing a unified theory to explain the entire particle physics. He considered such a project to be consistent with his religious line. “We (theoretical physicists) would like to understand the entire complexity of inanimate matter in terms of as few fundamental concepts as possible.” He also had the intellectual humility to accept that certain areas of science like Big Bang were not compatible with his religious tradition. He wrote, “Einstein was born into an Abrahamic faith; in his own view, he was deeply religious. Now this sense of wonder leads most scientists to a Superior Being – der Alte, the Old One, as Einstein affectionately called the Deity – a Superior Intelligence, the Lord of all Creation and Natural Law.” He once said that he gets flashes of scientific insights when he listens to religious sermons.
