مسلمانوں کا نیوٹن ۔ ڈاکٹر عبدالسلام — Page 394
384 The Independent, UK Nov۔29, 1996 A Colorful Personality Dr۔Tom Kibble Abdus Salam was one of the foremost theoretical physicists of his generation and the first Muslim to win a Nobel Prize, in 1979۔He was a warm and colorful personality, but often a controversial one in his native Pakistan۔Salam was born in 1926, in Jhang, a small town in the Punjab, son of a minor education official۔His talents were clear from an early age۔At 14, he became something of a local hero when he won a scholarship to Government College, Lahore, with the highest marks ever recorded۔His first paper was published when he was 17 and a fourth year student at the college۔It was an ingenious improvement on the solution of an algebraic problem discussed earlier by the Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan۔In 1946, he won a scholarship to Cambridge, where he obtained a Double First in Physics and Mathematics۔He briefly embarked on experimental research, but rapidly discovered that his talents lay in other directions and switched to theory۔He started at just the right moment۔Physicists had just learned how to get finite (and spectacularly confirmed) predictions out of quantum electrodynamics, the theory that describes interactions between charged particles and electromagnetic radiation, using the techniques of renormalization theory devised by Julian Schwinger, Sin- itiro Tomonaga, Richard Feynman and Freeman Dyson۔Salam and his research supervisor, Paul Matthew's, later his lifelong friend and collaborator showed how to extend these methods to other theories۔Salam's very first paper on the subject attracted widespread interest and won him a place among the leaders of the field۔In 1951, Salam returned, as he had always planned, to Pakistan۔He spent three increasingly frustrating years as Profess of Mathematics at both Punjab University, and his Alma Mater Government College, where his duties apparently included coaching the football team۔He had hoped to continue his research, but found little time or stimulus and no official support۔Finally he took leave of absence and returned to Cambridge as a lecturer in mathematics and Fellow of St۔John's College in 1954۔Three years later, at the instigation of Patrick Blackett, then head of Imperial College's rapidly expanding physics department, Salam was offered the chair of Theoretical Physics۔He persuaded Matthews to join him as a Reader, and together they set up what soon became of the world's leading centers for fundamental theoretical physics۔