Glowing tributes paid to Dr Abdus Salam

Hailed as one of the world's best theoretical physicists of the 20th century, Nobel Laureate Professor Dr Abdus Salam is relatively unknown in his home country, Pakistan, and his contributions even more so. It was stated by some of world's top physicists and mathematicians on Saturday while paying glowing tributes to scientific work of Salam, at a seminar at the Abdus Salam School of Mathematical Sciences (ASSMS), GC University Lahore.
"Salam should have also been given the Nobel Prize for outstanding efforts for the international science collaboration and development of scientific culture in third world countries," said Professor Dr Michael Duff from Imperial College London in his video message for the seminar. He also explained in detail the four big ideas of contemporary physics to which Salam contributed heavily.
In his video address, Professor Fernando Quevedo, the Director of International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) Italy, said apart from the work on standard model, for which Salam had been awarded the Nobel Prize, the list of his lasting contributions to theoretical physics was long and their impact was deep.
Cumrun Vafa, Professor of Science, Harvard University, USA also sent a video message to pay tribute to Professor Salam, saying that besides electroweak unification theory, establishment of ICPT was the Salam's biggest contribution to science. The speakers also shared their profound memories of working with Salam at the seminar and also celebrated his 91st birthday.
Addressing the seminar, Dr Jamil Aslam discussed the electroweak unification, the work for which Abdus Salam won the Noble Prize together with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow.
Talking about Salam's scientific work, Dr Amer Iqbal explained the mathematics behind symmetry and symmetry breaking which allows particles to get masses. Dr Rizwan Khalid discussed the idea of grand unification which unifies the strong nuclear with electroweak force. Dr Babar Qureshi explained super-symmetry which relates bosons and fermions and the idea of super-space introduced by Salam.
The speakers also said that Professor Salam's achievements were not confined to the Nobel Prize. At the age of 33, he became Fellow of the Royal Society London. He was the first from a Muslim country to achieve that distinction. At the age of 38, Salam became the Director of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) Trieste, Italy. For his contributions towards peace and promotion of International Science Collaboration, Professor Salam got the Atoms for Peace Medal and Award. He became fellow and member of more than 30 academies/societies of the world and was awarded DSc Honoris Causa by more than 40 universities of the world. There is a long list of his achievements, honours and awards.