مسلمانوں کا نیوٹن ۔ ڈاکٹر عبدالسلام — Page 402
392 Obituary, THE TIMES, November 26, 1996 A Man of Remarkable Vision Professor Abdus Salam, theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate, died on November 21, age 70۔He was born on January 29, 1926۔The death of Abdus Salam leaves the world of theoretical phycis without one of its most distinguished and respected members۔Born in Jhang, Pakisan,he was soon to display the outstanding creative ability that was such a consistent feature of his professional career۔Indeed, his first published scientific paper was produced at the early age of 17۔Undergraduate and postgraduate degrees followed from Government College, Lahore, and from the University of Cambridge۔The focus of his research was quantum field theory, with particular emphasis on the long-term goal of finding a unified approach to the fundamental forces at work in the worlds of nuclear and sub-nuclear physics۔In the 1960's Salam was closely involved with the attempts to construct a theoretically coherent account of the "strong" interactions that bind together the constituents of nuclei۔The mathematical technique on which he worked at that time provided the foundations of the developments that followed a sustained program of research culminating in his construction of a theory that unified the electric and magnetic forces with the "weak" nuclear force responsible for the radioactive decay of elementary particles۔The dramatic confirmation of this theory by experiments at the European particle-accelerator facility CERN lead to his sharing the 1979 Nobel prize for Physics with the American physicists, Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg۔This critical theoretical development became the central component of what became known as the "Standard Model" of the electromagnetic and nuclear forces۔The incorporation of the gravitational field into this unified picture is a notoriously difficult problem and it is no surprise that this is another area to which Salam turned his formidable attention۔The solution of this particular issue remains elusive but, working with this long-term collaborator John Strathdee, Salam developed some of the main tools for handling the "superfields" that later became major ingredient in the development of the superstring theory currently one of the most promising approaches to the problem of adding gravity to the list unified forces۔Intellectual gifts In addition to his brilliant intellectual gifts, Salam was a man of remarkable vision and outstanding energy who played a major role in developing science throughout the world۔Of particular significance was his success in 1964 in persuading the Italian government and the UN to found a research institute for theoretical physics in Trieste, Italy, the prime mission of which was to provide a base for young scientists from the developing countries to carry out research with each other and with visitors from the West۔Salam was the director of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics from 1964 to 1993, and it is a striking tribute to his charismatic and energetic personality that the Center survived, and indeed, flourished notwithstanding the