ABDUS SALAMthe Physicist and the Man

Mujahid Kamran

Abdus Salam was a man with a vision. Two passionsdominated his life - a hunger for creating and acquiringknowledge at the highest level, and a burning desire tosee the developing world stand up on its feet throughcultivation of knowledge. He was hemmed between twoworlds - on the one hand he wanted to fire the dormantSouth, the disease ridden world of the poor, the igno-rant, and the sluggish with a thirst for knowledge; onthe other hand, he kept prodding the conscience of therelevant sections of the North, the world of great scien-tists and narrow minded politicians, of idealists and giantvested interests, of plenty and power. He once conveyedhis torment to Robert Walgate by bursting out with theselines of Omar Khayyam.

Ah love! could thou and I with fate conspireTo grasp this sorry scheme of things entireWould we not shatter it to bits - and thenRemould it nearer to the heart’s desire

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1 Salam as a Physicist

Given Salam’s brilliance, his first passion enabled him tojoin the ranks of the greatest physicists of the twenti-eth century. Salam’s distinguishing feature as a physicistwas his uncanny knack for scenting out, from the plethoraof confusing possibilities, the one idea that turns out tomatter and leads to the deepest insight into the problem.It was a combination of this gift with his burning com-mitment that enabled him to stay, for four decades, inthe forefront of research in High Energy Physics, an areain which even the most brilliant minds usually fade outafter shinning for a few years.

In 1964, the journal Nature wrote of him:

There are very few physicists in the worldwho have maintained such a constant and fer-tile flow of brilliant ideas as Abdus Salam hasachieved during the past thirteen years.

This sentence remained true for another three decades.In almost every significant development in High EnergyPhysics in the period 1950-1992 (he was forced by ill-ness to give up working in 1993), be it renormalisation,elucidation of the behavior of the weak nuclear force, uni-tary symmetry, electro-weak unification, supersymmetry,string theory or grand unification, Salam played a signif-icant role.

It has been said of Salam’s scientific acumen that “Hisnose always points in the right direction”. (The late Pro-fessor M.S.K. Razmi, to whom I owe this sentence couldnot recall whether it had been uttered by Glashow or

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someone else). In summer 1990 I asked Salam what his“nose” told him about current ideas in his field. He saidthere was “definitely something” in supersymmetry. “Itwill always be there but may be at very high energies”he told me.

Mike Duff narrates that in the period 1969-72, whenhe was a graduate student at Imperial the Venezianomodel was a hot topic. This model was used for strongnuclear interactions. He writes:1

I distinctly remember Salam remarking on theapparent similarity between the mass and an-gular momentum of a Regge trajectory andthat of an extreme black hole. Nowadays, ofcourse, string theorists would juxtapose blackholes and Regge slopes without batting aneyelid but to suggest that black holes couldbehave as elementary particles in the late six-ties was considered preposterous by minds less-er than Salam.

Salam’s student Delbourgo has made an interesting ob-servation about Salam’s ability to guess what would beright without having worked out the mathematics at all.He writes:2

1M.J. Duff: in SalamfestSchrift, World Scientific, Editors: A.Ali, J. Ellis, Randjbar-Daemi, 1994, p 568

2R. Delbourgo: Teacher, Colleague and Friend ; in Science forPeace and Progress: Life and Work of Abdus Salam compiled byAnwar Dil, publishers Intercultural Forum, San Diego and Islam-abad (iforum@aol.com), 2008, p 569

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When standing up to argue with him on oneof the finer points of the problem you had tobe pretty darn sure of what you said becausehe had a wonderful intuition about the answerand was much more often right than wrong.When out of desperation you would confronthim and ask him how he could be so certain,he would break into one of his wicked smiles,twiddle his thumbs, lean back in his chair,raise his finger and point upwards. Mind youif you stood your ground and (on the odd oc-casion) turned out to be correct, he did re-spect you for it.

Luciano Bertocchi, who worked as Deputy Director ICTP,has made interesting comments. He had, in Fall 1956, re-ceived a copy of hand written lecture notes on dispersionrelations delivered by Salam at Rochester. He states thatthe lecture notes were “very typical of Salam’s style.” Hethen adds:3

Even for the formulae, although the beginningas well as the final result were correct, the in-termediate passages were full of mistakes; butthe final result was right. This was typical ofSalam: to be able to pick up, in physics aswell as in other domains, the most important

3L. Bertocchi: My Association with Abdus Salam; in Science forPeace and Progress: Life and Work of Abdus Salam compiled byAnwar Dil, publishers Intercultural Forum, San Diego and Islam-abad (iforum@aol.com), 2008, p 554

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points, and to look at them very carefully, ne-glecting the less important details, providedthe final result was correct.

The observations of Professor Gordon Feldman of JohnHopkins University, regarding Salam’s passion about phy-sics are quite interesting. He had studied at ImperialCollege. He states:4

Abdus was not only excited about his ownideas but also excited when he read aboutsomething but he had not known before andthought was simply beautiful. I remember hisbursting into the office once and on the black-board he drew a short line segment with twolittle circles attached to the end and with hiseyes glowing with excitement he said “that’sSU(3)”. Needless to say neither Paul (Matt-hews) nor I had a clue to what he was talk-ing about. Abdus had just started readingthe works of Dynkin and although he couldn’tanswer any of our halting questions he knewthe work was very significant and his joy wasvery infectious. I could go on with many moresuch episodes which filled the days with joy,happiness and laughter.

Incidentally in the same talk Gordon Feldman mentionedhow he had received from Salam, a copy of a cutting from

4Gordon Feldman: Fun with Abdus Salam; in Science for Peaceand Progress: Life and Work of Abdus Salam compiled by AnwarDil, publishers Intercultural Forum, San Diego and Islamabad (ifo-rum@aol.com), 2008, p 573

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a Swedish newspaper, that appeared one day before theaward of the 1975 Nobel Prize. Feldman had the articletranslated with the help of a Danish colleague. The ar-ticle speculated that Abdus Salam and Steven Weinbergwere possible candidates for the 1975 Nobel Prize.5 Thesaid article contained the following sentence in the veryfirst paragraph: “Salam who is fifty, and Weinberg, fortytwo, are both theoretical physicists, the former (Salam)is considered the modern day Einstein.”

The well known theoretician GianCarlo Ghirardi wasinterested in the foundations of quantum theory, an areain which Salam, surprisingly, had little interest. He statesthat Salam had told him several times: “Do figures notcome out all right when you use the theory - quantummechanics - in its standard formulations, to calculate theoutcomes of any actual experiment? Then what are youworried about?” However when Sir Karl Popper was todeliver a lecture at ICTP Salam called Ghirardi and askedhim to make “a long, incisive comment on the speech ofPopper, so that it will be clear to everybody that at theCenter we have adequate competencies in all fields relatedto Science.” When Ghirardi told him that he was verycritical of Popper’s views and that he could prove Popperwrong, Salam gave him the go ahead and Ghirardi dulywent to the blackboard after Popper’s talk and provedthat Popper’s gedanken experiment would imply a falsi-fication of quantum mechanics or relativity. Salam calledGhirardi on the following day to thank him for clarifying

5The 1975 Nobel Prize was awarded to Aage Bohr, B. Mottlesonand J. Rainwater.

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some interesting problems that had hitherto not caughthis attention. He also told Akhtar Said, former Minis-ter of Education, Government of the Punjab in a videorecorded interview that he had no interest in the work onfoundations of quantum theory.

Bertocchi has remarked that for Salam, “learning wasas important as creating.” Referring to a discussion re-garding physics that he had with him, when Salam’s ill-ness was advanced, Bertocchi states:6

He was asking me whether I knew a paper inwhich corrections to the semiclassical Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) approximation we-re discussed, since he felt he would need higherorder corrections to semiclassical calculationsin what he was doing at the moment in bio-physics. Since we - Fubini, Furlan and myself- had written a paper on the subject thirtyyears ago, I gave him a copy of that. The dayafter he called me again, to discuss details inour paper. One day for him was more thanenough, and by that time he already knewmore about the subject than I did.

In a video interview given to Akhtar Said at the end of1987, Salam confirmed what Bertocchi has stated. Hetold the interviewer that he was studying a new type ofmathematics7 which has not been used in physics before,

6Ibid, p 5567He qualified this by saying that the mathematics was about 50

years old or 100 years old or 20 years old depending on which partof the book you look at.

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that of Riemann surfaces. With a lovely smile full ofpleasure he said:8

We are reading it Sir, we are studying it, andit is very hard because we are in competitionat this time with 24 year olds. You see youare competing with boys who are 24 and havenothing else to do. They are young, their bod-ies are supple, and apart from this they havenothing else to do - this is very important.We have to do all kinds of things.

When the interviewer asked him whether he had not yetstopped his theoretical work he replied: “How can youfinish? How can you stop? Stopping is like death. Itis like writing poetry. Do poets die? Perhaps they do.”When Akhter Said asked him if he had “any disappoint-ments in creative work?” he replied:

The biggest disappointment is that I do notget enough time to do work in physics. Thatis the biggest disappointment. Like all physi-cists from the Third World our biggest re-sponsibility is to do something for our nation.That’s the biggest disappointment and thataffects your work. You can’t be as fully dis-charging your duties to physics as a man fromthe rich countries is. This is a great disap-pointment.

8Akhtar Said has very kindly provided me with a CD of theinterview.

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In the days when Salam was busy setting up and consoli-dating ICTP, he was in transit frequently. As Delbourgoput it: “The rumor that he did much of his research intransit or upon an aircraft is not far fetched.” Salam re-mained creative as long as his body supported him. Hewas stating his philosophy, by which he lived, when hesaid that to stop was to die. He never wanted to stopworking, learning and creating.

Salam’s scientific stature and his pioneering contribu-tions towards the spread of science in developing coun-tries were recognized the world over. But Salam was notjust a spokesman for science for developing countries. Heplayed a leadership role in advancing the cause of physicsresearch in the advanced world too. When he felt thatthe British Goverment was thinking of cutting Britain’sparticipation in CERN he spoke out. In an article titledParticle Physics: Will Britain Kill Its Own Creation?,that appeared in the New Scientist of 3 January 1985, hewrote:

I must say it comes as a great surprise to methat the British Government should have as-sembled a committee under the chairmanshipof Sir John Kendrew to review British par-ticipation in high energy particle physics ingeneral, and in the CERN enterprise in par-ticular. The unkindest cut is the committee’ssecond term of reference, which asks it to re-flect on re-allocation of the resources released,in whole or in part, to other areas of science.I am reminded of the Galahad story in P.G.

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Wodehouse where, at a convivial party, one ofthe Wodehouse characters biffs another witha round of beef. The latter falls unconscious,and all the “undertakers present” start bid-ding for the body · · ·Thus to find Britain, of all the countries, shou-ld contemplate withdrawing from the inter-national pursuit of a subject that constitutesone of the frontier areas of science, appearsto me incredibly destructive for the morale ofthe scientific enterprise worldwide.

While addressing a colloquium at CERN in Salam’s mem-ory, the Nobel Laureate Carlo Rubbia pointed out:9

Abdus had an important role in advising onthe CERN programs in particular as a mem-ber of the SPC. In 1987, when LEP was notyet operational, CERN Council and then DG,Herwig Schopper, created the so-called “LongRange Planning Committee” to define the fur-ther steps for CERN, Abdus, together withGiorgio Brianti, Pierre Darriulat, Kjell John-son, Sam Ting, and Simon Van der Meer,helped us in laying the foundation of whatis today the present and future of CERN. Itwas in this small circle of seven people thatthe names LHC and CLIC were coined and

9Carlo Rubbia: The Standard Model, Abdus Salam and CERN ;paper presented at the Special Colloquium in Memory of AbdusSalam at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN),Switzerland, September 23, 1997.

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the relative merits and potentialities of thehadron and linear colliders were elaboratedand evaluated in depth. I still recall the vividenthusiasm and clarity of Abdus’ vision onthe future of CERN: he used to insist on therelevance of concentrating primarily on key,strategic choices related to fundamental ques-tions. I believe that he has contributed in amajor way in defining the next twenty yearsof CERN strtaegy in its essentials · · ·I have no doubt that Abdus’ influence has sig-nificantly motivated also the emergence of themodern field of non-accelerator, undergroundexperiments.

Salam was elected honorary fellow of many prestigiousscientific bodies from the (former) USSR Academy of Sci-ence to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Hewas a recipient of numerous prestigious prizes, includingthe highest prize to which a scientist may aspire, the No-bel Prize. Salam was awarded D.Sc. Honoris Cause byforty four institutions world wide. With the exceptionof Australia and Antarctica, he was awarded honorarydoctorates from institutions in five continents viz. Asia,Africa, Europe, North America and South America. Thismay well be a world record of some sort. He was an au-thor or co-author of about 275 research papers and sev-eral books.10

10see appendix A for details of his biodata.

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2 Human Aspects

Salam was a very fascinating man who could relate withthe highest and the lowest with the greatest of ease. Thefollowing introductory remarks by Salam before the lec-ture by Werner Heisenberg, the discoverer of QuantumMechanics, give an idea of Salam’s great subtlety andsense of nuance:11

In 1748 the Shahinshah of Persia, invaded In-dia and he marched on to Delhi. He inflicteda severe defeat on the great Mogul of India.Delhi submitted and the two kings met to ne-gotiate peace. At the conclusion of these ne-gotiations, which included the transfer of thefamous Peacock Throne to Iran from Delhi,the Grand Vizier of the defeated Indian King,Asifijah, was summoned to present to the twomonarchs some wine to pledge the peace. TheVizier was faced with a real dilemma of proto-col. The dilemma was this; to whom shouldhe present his first cup of wine? If he pre-sented if first to his own master, the insultedPersian might draw his sword and slice theVizier’s head off. If he presented it to thePersian invader first, his own master mightresent it. After a moment of reflection, theGrand Vizier hit on a brilliant solution. He

11From a Life of Physics: Evening Lectures at the InternationalCenter for Theoretical Physics; A special supplement of the IAEABulletin, printed 1969; p31

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presented a golden tray with two cups on itto his own master and retired saying ‘Sire,it is not my station to present wine today.Only a King may serve a King.’ In this spiritI request one Grand Master of our subject,Professor Dirac, to introduce another GrandMaster, Professor Werner Heisenberg.

Salam was remarkably free of complexes. He was pleas-ant to talk to and was easily accessible. Salam was anavid reader.12 Even as a young student he used to readwidely. Science, history, literature, philosophy and reli-gion were his main interests. As a child he learnt Arabicand read the Quran which deeply influenced his thinking.The flow of his writings resulted from a combination offactors - his vision, wide reading, mastery over languageand deep conviction.

Ram Prakash Bambah knew him from his studentdays at Government College. He has narrated an inci-dent that throws light on Salam’s character even at thatearly age. He mentions that Salam became a member ofan informal group of students who had topped in variousexaminations. Bambah writes:13

Soon after Salam joined us, one of us, PremLuther, got an attack of appendicitis and had

12One of his close relatives told me that even the wash room inhis London home would be stacked with reading material!

13Ram Prakash Bambah: Together In Lahore and Cambridge inScience for Peace and Progress: Life and Work of Abdus Salamcompiled by Anwar Dil, publishers Intercultural Forum, San Diegoand Islamabad (iforum@aol.com), 2008, p 576.

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to be rushed to the hospital. Salam looked upeverything about appendicitis in the Encyclo-pedia Britannica and went to Prem’s bedsideto help nurse him. In the system, then andnow, the hospital did rely on attention fromfriends and relatives to see people throughtheir illness there. Salam spent forty eightsleepless hours attending to Prem after hissurgery. This endeared him to all of us andmade him a very close member of the group.Also his laughter, such vigorous laughter insuch a small body, made sure that whereverSalam was, there was a lot of friendship.

Salam remained helpful to people, regardless of race, coloror religion, throughout his life. He always helped peoplein a quiet way. He knew how to make and retain friends.This author met him in 1979 but before that ProfessorKemmer had mentioned to him the hearty laughter of Ab-dus Salam. All these traits were present in him as earlyas sixteen, as is obvious from Bambah’s description.

Salam had exceptional perseverance. The indifferenceof the world did not deter him from his goal. He pur-sued his goal with single minded determination - his staffwould testify to this. A physicist once asked Salam toforget about science in Pakistan because of the lack of in-terest on the part of the authorities. He instantly replied,“Oh, but we cannot give up.”

Salam had the remarkable ability to switch instantlyfrom scientific research to administrative work and back

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again. As Bertocchi stated:14

What impressed me about Salam were two as-pects.1) The capcity of switching very rapidly, al-most instantly, from scientific to managerialaspects, and especially vice versa, from man-agerial to scientific, always immediately iden-tifying the key points.2) His great enthusiasm: his will to try, toexplore new avenues, to launch new projects,even when he was not sure of success.In physics, as well as in managing and cre-ating new things, he always preferred to doone hundred things, ten of which were wrong,eighty right but normal, and ten excellent,rather than carefully analyzing a new idea be-fore trying, and in this way avoiding failuresby doing only ten things, nine of which wereright and normal, and only one excellent.

In an interview for a documentary film Bertocchi stated:15

I think he had two halves of his brain thatwere coexisting and one half was working inparallel with the other. He was able to switch

14L. Bertocchi: My Association with Abdus Salam; in Science forPeace and Progress: Life and Work of Abdus Salam compiled byAnwar Dil, publishers Intercultural Forum, San Diego and Islam-abad (iforum@aol.com), 2008, p 556

15http://vimeo.com/58447727; the documentary is being madeby two young men Zakir Thaver and Omar Vandal.

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from scientific administration, or administra-tion, to science in a microsecond.

In his last years Salam was severely handicapped by anunidentified ailment that finally confined him to the wheelchair for all practical purposes. He resisted the onslaughtof the disease with phenomenal strength. He would insiston walking on his own with the result that he fell manytimes hurting himself badly on several occasions. He suf-fered a fracture on at least one occasion but continued towork and to come to his office. He was a fighter and thiswas probably connected with his Rajput background aswell as his religious spirit.

Referring to his illness, he once told me, “They don’tunderstand it” - perhaps he did not want to accept thediagnosis, whatever it was. In a jointly written article hisdaughters Aziza Rahman and Bushra Salam Bajwa havepointed out that Salam suffered from PSP - para supranu-clear palsy.16 It was a measure of his enormous prestige(and a reflection upon the character of the Chinese) thatupon learning of his illness the Chinese embassy in Romedirected two Chinese experts in acupuncture to treat him.I learned about this from Salam in summer in 1990. Inview of his illness he decided to relinquish charge as Di-rector ICTP at the end of 1993, two years before theexpiry of his term. He remained honorary President ofICTP until his last day.

One of Salam’s most outstanding virtues was his fond-

16Aziza Rahman and Bushra Salam Bajwa: My Father, AbdusSalam; in Quarterly Al-Nahl, Special issue on Abdus Salam, Vol 8,Issue, Fall 1997, p 54

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ness for the younger generation. He encouraged youngerpeople and if he saw any spark in them he encouraged andprojected them immediately and whole-heartedly. Thishe did without asking for, or expecting anything in re-turn. Salam instituted prizes to encourage younger sci-entists. From his share of the Nobel Prize money he hasinstituted the Salam Prize (US $1000 plus certificate) tobe awarded every year to outstanding Pakistani scientistsunder 35 years of age.

In the words of Sir John Ziman (FRS) “Abdus Salamis a man whose heart is as great as his mind.” He wasvery generous and magnanimous in praising and appre-ciating the work of others. He made it a point to rewardthose eminent scientists who have not been sufficientlyrewarded despite the importance of their contribution.The prestigious Dirac Prize, instituted by the ICTP, isan example. It has been used to honor younger as wellas senior physicists. Its recipients include young men likeWitten and David Gross as well as people like Nambu(who, as Salam said at an award ceremony of the DiracPrize, had been in the “wilderness for too long” - this au-thor was present on the occasion) to whom we owe manydeep ideas in physics.

What did Salam look like? His photographs of hisyounger days reveal him as a handsome young man. Evenin old age, when he cared to dress up he sparkled. Glashowvisited Salam around 1960. In 1988 he wrote of his im-pressions of Salam:17

17Sheldon L. Glashow with Ben Bova: Interactions: A JourneyThrough the Mind of a Particle Physicist and the Matter of ThisWorld ; Warner Books, 1988.

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In the early spring I was invited to speakabout my work at Imperial College, the Lon-don haunt of Abdus Salam, with whom I wasto share the Nobel Prize twenty years later.Then, as now, Salam had the presence of anoriental potentate with a Cambridge educa-tion and a gift for speaking perfect English.

However as noted by Delbourgo he did not, like Dirac,bother about material things.

Salam’s eyes had a special shine which could be no-ticed even in his old age. Professor G.Murtaza, who washis student at Imperial has specifically mentioned this inan essay.18 He writes:

Salam’s awe inspiring personality, his domi-nance and his august temperament, and ontop of it the shine in his eyes - nobody coulddare to look into his eyes and talk to him · · ·There is an interesting incident regarding thedazzling brilliance of his eyes. Salam’s secre-tary, who on account of her mannerism, couldhave belonged to the world of theater, com-plained to P.T. Matthews about Salam. Withtears in her eyes she complained: “What kindof a person is Salam? He calls me in office,and without either saying hello or looking atme, starts dictating! P.T. Matthews (who was

18I have translated this from an Urdu article of his, a copy ofwhich he kindly gave me. The article is titled: Professor AbdusSalam - Ehad Saaz Shakhsiat aur Azeem Ustad ; (Epoch-makingPersonality and Great Teacher).

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a very kind person to whom everybody wouldair their grievances) consoled her and said:“You should be thankful that he did not lookat you for you would have trembled out offear!”

The stream of visitors in Salam’s Trieste office alwaysgave one the feeling that Salam was a “People’s Em-peror” loved and revered by his “people”, the scientificcommunity of developing countries. They looked to himfor guidance and sought his benevolence in sorting outtheir difficulties. They acknowledged him as their trueleader on account of his deep contributions to physicsand his deep understanding of their difficulties. He wasalways a “people’s” man. Delbourgo describes this sideof his personality in the following words referring to thetime when Salam was at Imperial College:19

Many of you will remember that Salam wasa totally unpretentious person. Curiously hequite enjoyed English refectory food (can youimagine that?) and was at his happiest whenmixing with the “plebeians” (as he called thestudent body) in contrast to the “patricians”(or staff). On one occasion when Bruno Zu-mino was visiting us from CERN and Salaminsisted on taking him for lunch to the stu-dent cafeteria rather than the Staff Common

19R. Delbourgo: Teacher, Colleague and Friend ; in Science forPeace and Progress: Life and Work of Abdus Salam compiled byAnwar Dil, publishers Intercultural Forum, San Diego and Islam-abad (iforum@aol.com), 2008, p 569

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Room, as he preferred to rub shoulders withthe “common man”. I think this tells us some-thing about his personality.

In his heart Salam was a man who cared for the com-mon people. His nephew Nasir Iqbal, who was employedat ICTP for some time, mentioned to this author thatthe well known physicist Luciano Fonda had told theSalam memorial meeting at Trieste in 1997 that Salamused to support, from his own pocket, students of TriesteUniversity who faced financial difficulties. He never re-ally cared for money for his own person. When he wonthe Catalunya Prize, he, subsequently, received a chequeworth U.S. $200,000. Salam gave the cheque to his Sec-retary Anne Gatti and asked her to deposit the check inthe ICTP account.

Professor Luciano Fonda writes:20

And then I became aware of his great hu-manity, of his donations to the poor with-out making himself conspicuous. As a mat-ter of fact, only a few people know that withthe money he received from prizes conferredupon him, he constituted a fund for dona-tions of instrumentation to the physics de-partments of developing countries. Togetherwith Strathdee, I was incharge of endorsinghis checks. These were extremely generous

20Luciano Fonda: From the Advanced School in Physics to theSynchrotron in Science for Peace and Progress: Life and Workof Abdus Salam compiled by Anwar Dil, publishers InterculturalForum, San Diego and Islamabad (iforum@aol.com), 2008, p 558.

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actions, which he carried out without show-ing off.

This author was told by a senior colleague that when hewas doing his Ph.D. in London in the early 1970s, he,at some point, ran into financial difficulties and went toSalam for help. He told this author that Salam gave himsome money that alleviated his difficulty.

Professor Bertocchi, a former Deputy Director of ICTP,narrates:21

To give you one example of his humanity, Iwill mention the following. A few years ago, athief entered the villa where he was living andmost of his medals were stolen. At the sametime, he also entered the home of the care-taker, stealing his money. Salam’s immediatepreoccupation was to reimburse the caretakerwhat he had lost; and we had indeed to finda way within the rules to do exactly that.

There used to be a very interesting and revealing pho-tograph of Salam in the ICTP corridors. It is probablystill there but this author has not been to ICTP since1995. In this photograph Salam is shaking hands withthe French President (probably Mitterand). Everyone inthe picture, including Salam, is dressed in the most ele-gant suits. But funnily enough, in the city which is the

21L. Bertocchi: My Association with Abdus Salam; in Science forPeace and Progress: Life and Work of Abdus Salam compiled byAnwar Dil, publishers Intercultural Forum, San Diego and Islam-abad (iforum@aol.com), 2008, p 556

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very heart of elegance, and while shaking hands with theHead of State of a country which prides itself on eleganceand sophistication, Salam is holding a plastic bag in hisleft hand! Why would he do that? Did he not care? Buthe was a man of great sense of nuance. Christiana Win-ter, one of the Secretaries at ICTP, burst out in laughterwhen she discussed it with this author, and laughinglycommented: “I think he does it deliberately.” May be hedid! As Professor Bertocchi stated:22 “He always dealt inthe same way with heads of states and with the poorestand youngest scientists.”One is reminded of Lord Ruther-ford who had no deference for authority.

Salam relished speaking in Punjabi, his mother tongue.The Secretary General of the Pakistan People’s Party, Ja-hangir Bader, told this author that on a vist to Pakistanin 1989, Professor Salam conveyed to him his desire to seeBader in his office as he was, at that time, a Federal Min-ister of Science and Technology (as well as Oil and Gas).Jahangir Bader told this author that insteasd of fixing ameeting in his office he decided to call on Professor Salamin his hotel room in Islamabad. After Badar introducedhad himslef in English and had uttered a few sentences,Salam interrupted him and asked him to speak in Pun-jabi instead of English. This author and many visitors toICTP who spoke Punjabi, know that Salam always talkedto them in Punjabi.

Salam was lonely in a deep way. The rejection byhis government and the establishment, as well as by theorthodoxy, an orthodoxy that gained ground and momen-

22Ibid, p 556

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tum during the era of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq and the Afghanwar, pained him.23 A Pakistani physicist, Professor Ab-dul Waheed, once told me that when he informed Salamthat he had prayed for him at the Holy Kaabah24 Salam’seyes turned wet. This author saw Salam’s eyes turn weton several occasions when it was pointed out to him thatthe ordinary people of Pakistan respected him.

K.K. Aziz has described an incident involving Salamthat reflects the conflict between the orthodox and saneelements. Aziz was in Khartoum, Sudan for fifteen yearsand happened to be there when the incident took place inJanuary 1983. Khartoum University had invited Salamto bestow upon him an honorary Ph.D. degree and theceremony was to be held on January 9th. At the timeGeneral Ja’fer Nameri was the ruler of Sudan. Aziz nar-rates:25

23Salam once told Zia-ul-Haq that members of his community,working for the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, were beingdiscriminated against. Zia-ul-Haq asked Salam that if he were tobe provided with the list of their names he would ensure that theywould not be discriminated against. When this list of all mem-bers of Salam’s community was provided to Zia-ul-Haq, all of themwere removed from work on the nuclear bomb project! When Zia-ul-Haq’s plane crashed an Italian Secretary ‘Loisa’ (or Mariam)Durrani (she was married to a Pakistani) informed him in his of-fice. Apparently Salam’s reaction indicated his sense of satisfactionat the death of Zia-ul-Haq. He had cause to be bitter about Zia-ul-Haq.

24Salam’s community had been declared non-Muslim by an act ofthe Parliament during Z.A. Bhutto’s regime and therefore he wasnot allowed to visit the Holy Kaabah.

25K.K. Aziz: The Coffee House of Lahore - A Memoir 1942-57 ;Sang e Meel Publishers, 2008, pp 215-216

23

2. Human Aspects

On 7 January the Saudi ambassador met Na-meri and asked him to cancel the university’sspecial convocation where Salam was to begiven an honorary degree. Nameri called theVice Chancellor the same day and told himof the Saudi objection. The Vice Chancellordecided to take a stand and said he wouldconsult the academic staff to find out theirreaction on the crisis. An emergency meetingwas held the same evening and after a shortdebate the entire Sudanese staff decided toconfront the Chancellor and declared that itwould resign if the convocation was canceled.Next morning the Vice Chancellor and all thedeans and heads of departments and insti-tutes met Nameri and conveyed to him the lo-cal staff’s to flout the Saudi “orders”, addingthat the expatriate staff, though not involvedin the crisis, had been informally consultedand they stood behind the decision to ten-der en mass resignations. It was an act ofgreat courage to face the Saudi pressure andof a military ruler who enjoyed untrammeledauthority. All the credit goes to Nameri foracceptance of the staff’s decision, his respectfor the autonomy of the university and hispromise to attend the convocation and awardthe degree to Salam.

His illness added much more to his loneliness as he in-creasingly became physically incapacitated. This author

24

2. Human Aspects

owes much of his information on Salam’s last days toNasir Iqbal, son of the late Col. G.M. Iqbal, (Salam’sfirst wife Amtul Hafeez was the real sister of Col. Iqbal.).Nasir Iqbal worked at ICTP for several years and since hewas Salam’s nephew he had access to Salam after officehours. Nasir has told this author many incidents whichhave probably not been penned down before. These in-cidents shed light on Salam’s lonely life in its last phaseand also on the wonderful attitude of the Italians, theTriestinos in particular, towards Salam.

Nasir Iqbal stated that Salam was much loved andadmired by the people of Trieste as he had transformedTrieste into a science city. Nasir Iqbal narrated that heneeded to buy some flowers on a particular St. Valen-tine’s day. The florist, an old lady, asked Nasir where hecame from. When Nasir mentioned that he was from Pak-istan she said that there was a Pakistani Nobel Prize win-ner in Trieste. When Nasir pointed out he was Salam’snephew she refused to take any money for the flowersfrom him and said that it was an honor for her that hewas Salam’s nephew. She then gave him a flower forSalam and asked him to tell Salam that “We love him.”Salam was so touched by this incident when he came toknow of it that his “eyes became wet and tears rolleddown his eyes.” He was ill at that time and lay in bed.

Nasir told this author that one night Salam fell downin his Trieste residence where he resided all alone. He washurt and bled and lay on the floor all night as he couldnot get up. He also was unable to call anyone or raiseany kind of alarm. Pierre Agbedjro, who used to drivehis official car, went inside his residence around 7.00 AM

25

2. Human Aspects

the next morning and saw him lying where he had fallen.Apparently his Pakistani wife never wanted to live in

Trieste as she felt lonely there. Salam had four childrenfrom her, three daughters (in order of their ages) namedAziza, Asifah and Bushra, and a son, the youngest ofthe four, named Ahmad Salam.26 Ahmad Salam statedin an interview for a documentary being made on Salamthat he saw so little of his father that when he was sixor seven years old he would ask his mother if he couldbring his bedding into Salam’s bedroom and put it onthe floor just to be close to him. “I wanted to be withhim as much as possible.”27 Two of his daughters havegiven us valuable glimpses of his family life and his workhabits. They write:28

His travels took him all over the world · · ·Thus, his work left him little time for thefamily life. · · · He was quite strict at home,especially where our studies were concerned.He would bring us each workbooks and be-fore going to his college he would set us cer-tain pages that we had to do. Whenever hereturned from an overseas trip, he would callus into his room and check on our grades andprogress. He encouraged us and gave us con-

26Aziza has a PhD in biochemistry, while Ahmad has a degree inFinance and works for a Kuwaiti company from London. All threedaughters are housewives.

27http://vimeo.com/5844772728Aziza Rahman and Bushra Salam Bajwa: My Father, Abdus

Salam; in Quarterly Al-Nahl, Special issue on Abdus Salam, Vol 8,Issue, Fall 1997, p 51-52

26

2. Human Aspects

fidence by constantly reminding us of one ofhis favorite sayings, “Do your best and leavethe rest to Allah.” · · ·He himself never stopped working. · · · Myfather maintained his meticulous work habitsin an unflagging routine punctuated by “cat-naps” and endless supplies of sweets and hottea · · · He would go to bed around eight ornine o’ clock in the evening, and arise a veryfew hours later to work in the silent hoursbefore dawn when his level of concentrationand creativity would perhaps reach its peak,sustained by a thermos of hot, sweet tea andsome snacks that we would place by his be-disde before sleeping.

Nasir sometimes cooked Pakistani food for Salam, foodwhich Salam relished.29 He used to wait for Nasir some-times so that Nasir could cook something that he missedbecause he had lived in the West, mostly on his own.As a student his favorite dish was mutton-potato curry.One day Nasir cooked mincemeat-potato curry for him.Salam enjoyed the dish so much that he held Nasir’s handand prayed for him. Nasir told me that one day Salamheld his hand and would not let go - there were tears inhis eyes. Nasir said that he could not bear to see that- the plight of such a great man made him very emo-tional. But Salam was to stay alone. He had devoted

29When, in 1987, Salam was an official guest of the Governmentof the Punjab, he told this author in Lahore: “People here don’teven realize what one misses when abroad. They invited me todinner in a Chinese resturant. I have refused.”

27

2. Human Aspects

his life to physics and to ICTP and maybe his son feltneglected. In the absence of his eldest son Nasir had be-come a surrogate son. Thus even when he was ill he hadno companion, no one to be with him at his home in Tri-este. But, as Nasir Iqbal said: “Salam never wanted tosurrender - he kept struggling to the very end, trying tostand up and walk.”

Nasir told me that Salam had a sweet tooth. He said:“He always used to have sweets and fruit by his bedsideon the left and a lot of books on the right. He would takeshort naps. Between the naps he would get up and startreading.” This description of his last years is consistentwith what his daughters have described about his habitsduring the Imperial College years before ICTP was setup. Because of his love of reading he never allowed a TVin his house during the Imperial College years despite theprotestation of his kids. However his daughter wrote af-ter his death that they were grateful that they had noTV since they “spent more time reading.” Salam almostnever vacationed. He worked continuously throughout hislife, as long as his body supported him. His son UmarSalam told interviewers for a documentary film:30

He had three full time jobs at least. He wasProfessor of Physics at Imperial, he was set-ting up ICTP, and he was also Chief ScientificAdviser to the Government of Pakistan. Andhow he managed to combine these things Icannot even begin to imagine. It is superhu-

30http://vimeo.com/58447727; the documentary is being madeby two young men Zakir Thaver and Omar Vandal.

28

2. Human Aspects

man and yet I think that he was all the timesubject to very human fears. He was alwaysworried he wasn’t doing enough.

A day or two before Salam died I began receiving callsfrom his cousin Col. G.M. Iqbal who said that Salamwas not well and asked me to pray for him. Col. Iqbalcalled me as soon as Salam passed away to inform meof the sad event. He told me that although Salam hadbeen almost unconscious for a while the doctors felt thathe had a very stout heart. I was reminded of what oneof the secretaries at ICTP, Mrs Ondina Turra once saidto me - Salam had then been fairly confined - she saidthat it was very sad as, in the days when his health wasgood, “He was like a lion”. He died in the early hours ofNovember 21, 1996 at the residence of his English wifeProfessor Dame Louise Johnson.31 I think he preferredstaying with Louise. There is no other apparent reasonas to why he chose to spend his last days with her. Thisimpression is confirmed by an obituary in the daily TheTelegraph:32

31Louise Johnson was an FRS and a Professor of Molecular Bio-physics in Oxford. They had two children, a son and a daughter.The son is named Umar Salam and the daughter Saeeda Hajira. Iam told that Umar has completed his Ph.D. in mathematics fromCambridge. I remember that it was during a summer of the mid1980s, that Salam asked me to teach Urdu to Umar. I did so for afew days. When I asked Umar if he was really interested in learn-ing Urdu, Umar said that he was doing it only because his fatherwanted him to learn Urdu. Interestingly, one day Salam checkedthe words I had taught him and their transliteration.

32Daily Telegraph 8 October 2012; Professor Dame LouiseJohnson:

29

2. Human Aspects

Iftikhar Ahmed, a physicist who worked veryclosely with Salam, recalled them as being“madly in love - it was always ‘my darling’this, and ‘my darling’ that ... I never sawhim happier than when he was with Louise”.

Salam and Louise Johnson were married in 1968.When I first met Salam in 1979 he had come to Edin-

burgh to attend the retirement ceremony of his supervisorProfessor Kemmer. He told me that when he checked intothe hotel, the man at the counter discreetly asked howlong had he been in Britain. When Salam said twenty fiveyears, the receptionist said that he must then be a Britishcitizen. When Salam replied in the negative the recep-tionist was very surprised and said that he would thenhave to ask for his passport. This says something aboutSalam’s loyalty and sense of identification with Pakistan.His body was brought to Pakistan and placed at the maincenter of his community in Lahore before being taken towhat was once called Rabwah,33 at one time the home ofhis community in Pakistan, where his parents lay buried.Everyone who knew him in his healthy days and saw thebody was shocked at the transformation.34 The news ofhis death hit headlines immediately. The President and

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9594182/Professor-Dame-Louise-Johnson.html

33The city has been renamed Chenabnagar under pressure ofsome local religious leaders.

34Salam used to weigh around 85 kg but by December 1995,almost a year before his death, he had lost so much weight that,according to Nasir Iqbal, who last saw him on December 5, 1995,he had become a “skeleton” weighing about 40-45 kg.

30

2. Human Aspects

the Prime Minister of Pakistan issued the usual state-ments but the news of the arrival of his dead body waspractically blacked out by the official media. Howeverpeople had lined the road to see the body being carriedin a vehicle, the body of a man whose greatness appearsto increase with time.

His son Ahmad Salam, who had accompanied thedead body,35 said that the kind of huge reception theygot on arrival of the dead body in Lahore was “absolutelyunexpected”. It was dark and, he said, that the peoplewho had lined the road were not just the people of hiscommunity. He said that: “The line of the people wentso far back because they had been told that the body ofAbdus Salam was coming through. These were ordinarypeople.” He was buried in former Rabwah (Chenabnagar)and his funeral was attended by about 35,000 people.

Those who knew Salam as a student remember that hewas very obedient to his father. His daughters have alsoconfirmed this in their article.36 It was his will that he beburied near his parents in what was formerly called Rab-wah (Chenabnagar). His daughters mention that amonghis papers, the following note was found:37

If for any reason it is not possible to take meto Rabwah, then let my tombstone read: “Hewished to lie at his mother’s feet.”

35Dame Professor Louise Johnson also accompanied the bodywith their two children.

36Aziza Rahman and Bushra Salam Bajwa: My Father, AbdusSalam; in Quarterly Al-Nahl, Special issue on Abdus Salam, Vol 8,Issue, Fall 1997, p 53.

37Ibid, p 53.

31

2. Human Aspects

For many years Salam had a pet overcoat and a pet hat.38

These would hang in the lobby outside his office if he werearound. He carried them with him wherever he went,regardless of the season. Sometimes, when I used to seehim from behind, trudging along in his hat and overcoat,he looked like a homeless tramp! Perhaps in a profoundway he had no home, like Einstein. He reminded one ofhis counterpart in politics, Mao tse Tung, who once saidthat he felt like a lonely monk walking through a rainyworld with a leaky umbrella. Thus he has passed intohistory along side the great unifiers of twentieth centuryphysics - Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Dirac, Schrodinger,Glashow and Weinberg - and as a crusader consumed bythe quest for a great ideal.

38It has been pointed out by Munir Ahmad Khan that Salamdeveloped the habit of overdressing because during his studies atCambridge there was no heating in classrooms and he would wearheavy coats during lectures.

32

Index

Agbedjro, Pierre, 25Ahmed, Iftikhar, 30Ali, A., 3Aziz, K.K., 23

Bader, Jahangir, 22Bajwa, Bushra Salam, 16,

26, 31Bambah, R.P., 13, 14Bertocchi, L., 4, 7, 15, 21,

22Bhutto, Z.A., 23Bohr, A., 6Bohr, N., 32Bova, Ben, 17Brianti, G., 10Britain, 9, 10, 30

Catalunya Prize, 20CERN, 9–11, 19Chenabnagar, 30, 31CLIC, 10

D.Sc. Honoris Cause, 11Darriulat, P., 10Delbourgo, R, 3, 18, 19Delbourgo, R., 9Dil, Anwar, 3–5, 13, 15, 19–

21

Dirac Prize, 17Dirac, P.A.M, 32dispersion relations, 4Duff, M.J., 3Durrani, M., 23Dynkin, Eugene, 5

Edinburgh, 30Einstein, Albert, 6electro-weak unification, 2Ellis, J., 3

Feldman, G., 5Fonda, L., 20FRS, 29Fubini, S., 7Furlan, 7

Gatti, Anne, 20Ghirardi, G., 6Glashow, S.L., 2, 17, 32

on Salam, 17Gross, David, 17

Hafeez, Amtul, 25Hajira, Saeeda, 29Heisenberg, Werner, 13, 32

ICTP, 16, 20, 22, 25, 28Imperial College, 5, 19, 28

33

INDEX

Iqbal, G.M., 25, 29Iqbal, Nasir, 20, 25, 27, 28,

30

Johnson, Kjell, 10Johnson, Louise, 29, 31

Kaabah, 23Kemmer, N., 14, 30Kendrew, John, 9Khan, Munir Ahmad, 32Khartoum, 23Khartoum University, 23Khayyam, Omar, 1

Lahore, 27, 31LEP, 10LHC, 10London, 21Luther, Prem, 13, 14

Mao-tse-Tung, 32Matthews, P.T., 5, 18Mitterand, F, 21Mottleson, B., 6Murtaza, G., 18

Nambu, Y., 17Nameri, Ja’far, 24Nature, 2Nobel Prize, 11

Pakistan, 30, 31

para supranuclear palsy, 16Popper, Karl, 6PSP, 16

Quran, 13

Rabwah, 30, 31Rahman, Aziza, 16, 26, 31Rainwater, J., 6Rajput, 16Randjbar-Daemi, 3Razmi, M.S.K., 2Regge slopes, 3Regge trajectory, 3renormalisation, 2Riemann surfaces, 8Rubbia, Carlo, 10Rutherford, E, 22

Said, Akhtar, 7, 8Salam, A.

penchant for Punjabi, 22acupuncture, 16ailment, 16and CERN, 10and Louise, 30and Louise Johnson, 30and Zia-ul-Haq, 23at Kemmer’s retirement,

30avid reader, 13dead body in Lahore, 31

34

INDEX

death, 29Edinburgh hotel incident,

30falls down, 25fondness for younger peo-

ple, 16helps Prem Luther, 13humanity, 20, 21Khartoum incident, 23last days, 25loneliness, 22, 26Nature comment, 2on Nambu, 17on Regge trajectories and

black holes, 3perseverance, 14support to poor students,

20sweet tooth, 28

Salam, Ahmad, 26, 31Salam, Umar, 28, 29Schopper, Herwig, 10Schrodinger, E., 32St. Valentine’s day, 25Strathdee, J., 20String Theory, 2Sudan, 23supersymmetry, 2, 3

Thaver, Zakir, 15, 28The Telegraph, 29

Ting, Sam, 10Trieste, 20, 25, 26Turra, O., 29

unitary symmetry, 2Urdu, 29

Van der Meer, Simon, 10Vandal, Omar, 15, 28Veneziano model, 3

Waheed, A, 23Walgate, R., 1Weinberg, S., 6, 32Winter, C, 22Witten, E, 17WKB approximation, 7Wodehouse, P.G., 10

Zia-ul-Haq, 23Ziman, John, 17Zumino, B., 19

35