Abdus Salam
Mohammad Abdus Salam NI, SPk, KBE (Punjabi, Urdu: محمد عبد السلام ; pronounced [əbd ʊs səlɑm]; 29 January 1926 – 21 November 1996), was a Pakistani theoretical physicist who, when he shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contribution to electroweak unification, became the first Pakistani to receive a Nobel Prize and also the second Muslim to win the prize, after Anwar El Sadat of Egypt, and the first Muslim to win the 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 developments and contributions in theoretical and particle physics, but also for promoting scientific research to maximum levels in his country. 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 may have contributed to 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 Muslim Community as not-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. 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-World countries.