Local, foreign professors pay tribute to Dr Abdus Salam

LAHORE: Top physicists and mathematicians on Saturday paying tributes to Nobel Laureate Prof Dr Abdus Salam said Dr Salam was hailed as one of the world's best theoretical physicists of the 20th century but he was relatively unknown in his home country.

They were speaking at a seminar at the Government College University’s Abdus Salam School of Mathematical Sciences (ASSMS).

In his video message for the seminar, Prof Dr Michael Duff from Imperial College, London, said “Salam should have also been given the Nobel Prize for Peace for outstanding efforts for the international science collaboration and development of scientific culture in third world countries.” He also explained the four big ideas of contemporary physics to which Salam contributed heavily.

Professor Fernando Quevedo, director of International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Italy, in his video address, 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. He added that Salam had been the pioneer of the idea to go beyond the standard model of physics.

Cumrun Vafa, professor of science, Harvard University, the US, also sent a video message to pay tribute to Prof Salam, saying that besides electroweak unification theory, establishment of ICPT was the Salam’s biggest contribution to science.

He said the centre remained a monument to Salam’s determination to this day.

The speakers also shared their profound memoires of working with Salam and also celebrated his 91st birthday.

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 allowed particles to get masses.

Dr Rizwan Khalid discussed the idea of grand unification which unified the strong nuclear with electroweak force. Dr Babar Qureshi explained supersymmetry which related bosons and fermions and the idea of super-space introduced by Salam.