Remembering Salam;

The Route Less taken

Shaukat Hameed Khan COMSTECH

29th January 2016

Remembering Salam

10th December, 1979. Salam Receives the Nobel Prize

from King Carl Gustaf VI of Sweden

CERN, Geneva, where his theoretical work was confirmed … leading to the Nobel Prize

Noble Laureates, PhysIcs, 1979. Left to right: Sheldon Lee Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg

(R to L) - Dr. Shah Nawaz Khan, Mr. Webster, Ch. Muhammad Hussain (F/o Prof. Dr. Abdus Salam), Maj. Hameed, Mr. Abdur Rashed (b/o Prof. Dr. Abdus Salam). Picture provided by his nephew

From the family Home to the Nobel Prize

His family home today

St. John’s College, Cambridge

Government College Lahore

St. John’s Library

Life at Cambridge, Hasn’t Changed Much!

River Cam

The Streets of Cambridge

Newton

Cambridge: A Hallowed Tradition

College Picture, 1951

Newton

“ Mathematics was not an abstract subject in its own right but it was something to be used to understand the world around us, and thereby understand how God works his wonders…”

With Prof. Riazuddin

Staff at Govt. College Lahore. Year?

People He Worked With

Dirac

Fr. Row: Muneer Rashid, John Charap, Tom Kibble, Abdus Salam, Paul Mathews, Mavis Avis, Ray Streater, Arif-uz-Zaman, Ron King.

Back Row: Ansaruddin Sayed, Yahya Khan, Shaun Dunne, Jimmy Boyce, Ghulam Murtaza, unknown, Ray Rivers, Ian Yamanaka, Ian Poston, Sarwar Razmi, John Strathdea, Ian Ketley, Kamuladdin Ahmad, and Dick Roberts. * Those from Pakistan highlighted

Theoretical Physics Group, Blacket Laboratories, 1964.

“Professor Dame Louise Johnson, who has died a day before her 72nd birthday, was a leading molecular biologist who helped to elucidate the properties of lysozyme — an enzyme present in tears …. With Thomas Blundell, she wrote the classic textbook on protein crystallography, a technique now routinely used to determine how a pharmaceutical drug interacts with its protein target” . www.telegraph.co.uk; 8th Oct 2012

With Mohamed H.A. Hassan, Executive Director of TWAS. TWAS was founded in 1983 by Abdus Salam to encourage science in the developing countries

His Second Wife

and his role in TWAS

With Z.A. Bhutto and Munir Ahmed Khan PINSTECH, 1972.

Nathiagali Summer College, 1976

Salam and Pakistani Science

Note: I spent three days with him at the Quetta Club, Feb 1972, prior to the ‘famous’ Multan Conference, 1972. He initially refused to leave his room in Multan, until a senior physicist of the PAEC apologised for some crass remarks.

With Hans Blix, Dir. Gen. IAEA, (1981)

His Family Home is a National Monument !!

His home, a National

Monument!

His School Certificate, Middle Level

Nishan -i- Imtiaz, by Pakistan, Dec 1979.

Replica of his Nobel Award, displayed at his school in Jhang

Some Awards

The Honorary Degree by QAU; disrupted by a religious party, Shifted to the National Assembly. Did the Govt. College Lahore ever Honour Salam?

K. K. Aziz, Pakistan's pre-eminent historian in his memoirs, "The

Coffee House of Lahore" wrote a "roll of honour" about the eminent

intellectuals who gathered in the coffee houses and the Pak Tea

House and represented the best of minds and contributed to

intellectual development.

Aziz writes about his meetings, friendship and hardship faced by Dr

Abdus Salam.

He laments the destruction of cultural, intellectual and political

thought throughout his books; this is a book spoken from the heart.

Salam died, full of honours and laurels from across the world, on 21

November 1996, in Oxford.

His brother, who lived in Lahore, asked the Government if it would

like to provide protocol on the arrival of the coffin. There was no

response. He was buried in Rabwah, on 2 November at 11 A.M at the

foot of his mother’s grave.

Source: http://defence.pk/threads/dr-abdus-salam-in-the-words-of-k-

k-aziz.57574/#ixzz3yKrCgj57

We still choose to the deny the reasons why we have neglected his

memory and choose to neglect Salam's contributions, why we almost

demonized his existence and how we harassed him.

K K Aziz narrates his harrasment at the hands of academics,

bureaucrats, politicians and state functionaries alike and how Saudi

Arabia tried to block a honorary doctorate degree ceremeony in Sudan.

During his visit to India, Indira Gandhi made coffee for Salam herself

and sat at his feet to give him respect.

The greatest son of the soil, neglected by the state, harassed by the

people, honoured by "the enemy" and forgotten from the public

memory, Dr Abdus Salam.

Source: http://defence.pk/threads/dr-abdus-salam-in-the-words-of-k-k-

aziz.57574/#ixzz3yKrCgj57

Excerpts from K.K. Aziz

“Scientific thought and its creation is the common and shared

heritage of mankind.

From time immemorial, man has desired to comprehend the

complexity of nature in terms of as few elementary concepts as

possible.

The creation of Physics is the shared heritage of all mankind. East

and West, North and South have equally participated in it.

In this respect, the history of science, like the history of all

civilization, has gone through cycles”.

Some Quotes from Abdus Salam

“I would like to live to regret my words but twenty years from now, I

am positive, the less developed world will be as hungry. As relatively

undeveloped, and as desperately poor, as today. And this, despite the

fact that that we know the world has enough resources – technical,

scientific, and material – to eliminate poverty, disease, and early

death, for the whole human race”.

The World in 1984-Volume 1; The complete New Scientist Series-Edited by Nigel Calder, 1964. (100 people deliberated on Orwell’s 1984)

His Gravestone

Original

Defaced

The word ‘Muslim’

is removed!

“Salam died, full of honours and laurels from across the world, on 21 November

1996, in Oxford. His brother, who lived in Lahore, asked the Government if it

would like to provide protocol on the arrival of the coffin. There was no

response. He was buried in Rabwah, on 2 November at 11 A.M at the foot of his

mother’s grave.” Source: K.K. Aziz

Let us honor if we can The vertical man Though we value none But the horizontal one.

By W. H. Auden From the poem “Vertical Man” - To Christopher Isherwood - ( in "Poems," 1930)

Some Final Thoughts