مسلمانوں کا نیوٹن ۔ ڈاکٹر عبدالسلام — Page 405
395 into supporting his dream of a major center for physicists from the developing world۔With this unhappy period at Government College at the back of his mind, Salam wanted a place where third world physicists could practice the advanced science of the West without being forced to become part of the brain drain, as he himself had seen۔In 1964, supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Salam succeeded in setting up the ICTP in Trieste, Italy۔A great scientist How great a scientist was Salam? This is an important question because in our country one has to chart a delicate course between the Scylla of adulation and hyperbole, and the Charybdis of stupidity and prejudice۔An honest answer is made still more unlikely because there is no community of scientists in Pakistan, which can understand and sensibly evaluate his work۔The truth is that Abdus Salam was not Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein or Richard Feynman; he never claimed otherwise and would have felt deeply uncomfortable if someone else had claimed this for him۔But his achievement of unifying two basic forces of nature has had greater impact upon the development of physics, and is deeper and more profound, than the works of most other Nobel Prize winners in this century۔Today unification theory is a touchstone of modern physics۔Although it is not Salam's only important- the full spectrum is much too broad to cover here - it certainly is his most important one۔It took me many years to appreciate the delicate complexity and marvelous mathematical symmetry of Salam's theory۔To explain it in ordinary language is impossibility۔An analogy, however, may help۔Over a century ago the Scotsman, James Maxwell, showed that the two apparently different phenomena of electricity and magnetism were in fact just different facets of the same basic force, which he called the electromagnetic force۔Maxwell's discovery led to an unending stream of other discoveries, such as the existence of radio waves, which have had profound consequences of human civilization۔Somewhat similarly, Salam was able to show that two apparently very different forces, which govern nature, have the same mathematical origin۔One is the electromagnetic force mentioned above۔The other is the "weak nuclear force" which, among other things is that force which causes the sun to convert its hydrogen into nuclear energy۔Although there were suspicious that the two were somehow related, nobody could pinpoint in mathematical terms the precise relation until Salam (from London) and Weinberg (from MIT, USA), working independently of each other, came up with a sound explanation almost simultaneously۔Now called the electroweak force, it has been tested in dozens of clever experiments and has passed with flying colors in each۔Today the search for the Higgs particle, predicted by Salam, is considered the number one priority in the world of physics۔Billions of dollars continue to be spent on building accelerators with energies high enough to produced highly elusive particle۔Its discovery will be a key to understanding the universe in its early stages of birth۔Science and faith What relation did Salam see between his work as a scientist and his religious faith? Did he perceive the two to be inextricably intertwined? Or did he see