Remembering Abdus Salam

Khaled Ahmed has identified his ten ``personal`` great Pakistanis (Friday Times, August 13, 1999). In including Professor Salam in his list, Ahmed writes:

The greatness of Prof Abdus Salam, in my view, lay in his genius to transcend the village environment where he grew up in Punjab in a humble family. In Government College Lahore he was penalised by principal Prof Siraj for attending a Nobel Laureates` conference in India, which was just as well because that made Salam go to Cambridge for doctorates in Maths and Physics, joining the world coterie of scientists on the cutting edge of theoretical discovery. As a Nobel Laureate he emerged as an accomplished public speaker, an adept of the Islamic heritage of science, greatly sought after in the Islamic world as a lecturer. At a UAE forum, he faulted Ibn Khaldun for decrying the renaissance of Muslim Age of Reason in Spain. He affirmed his identity of a Pakistani when he patronised Pakistani young scientists at his institute in Trieste. A stamp commemorating him is Pakistan`s tribute to the great man although the orthodoxy rejects him.

-- Friday Times

Re: Rehan Mahmud

He quite possibly was one of the greatest. It is very difficult to judge now the rankings of different Muslim scientists, but a few great names come to mind e.g. Ibn-Haitham, Ibn-Sina, Al-Khwarzimi, Jabbar bin Hayyan ...

Re: Nusrat Rizvi

I bet they were also embarassed when he mentioned the scientific achievements of Muslims for the first time in the hall of the Nobel Prize ceremony. It must have effectively shattered the myth that only people of a certain race and background had the brains to do fundamental research.

I am a particle physicist myself, just like Salam was. I can assure you that he deserved the prize that he got. His Electroweak theory is the central piece of modern physics and he is truly a giant in 20th century physics, ranking with the likes of Schroedinger, Dirac and Feynman. The prize was given to him when his contributions could no longer be denied.

You would also be amused to learn that Salam missed an earlier opportunity to win the Nobel Prize in 1960`s, when he withdrew a seminal paper upon the request of Wolfgang Pauli. Pauli later publicly apologized for his mistake.

Salam`s contributions to physics are truly fundamental, and the seeds that he planted in terms of his ideas, have led to a flourishing of new subjects within physics.

Dear ``Witheld ...``

I would refer you to the related article by Prof. Pervez Hoodbhoy (Salam, Science and Secularism).

I will not agree with you when you say that we (Pakistanis) are oblivious of the fact that he was an Ahmedi and embrace him as a scientist. In fact it is the reverse: We are only aware of the fact that he was born an Ahmedi, and therefore totally reject him as a scientist.

When Salam came to visit Pakistan during the time of Gen. Zia, he addressed prominent academicians from Pakistan and asked them to ``at least accept him as a reformer, if not as a Muslim.`` Other incidents mentioned in Prof. Hoodbhoy`s articles can also convince you that Pakistan repeatedly rejected his contributions and he never turned his back on his nation.

Excellent tribute to a REAL hero.

It is a tragedy that people of such brilliance have been persecuted because of their religious heritage. The crimes committed against the Ahamedia sect are very close to being repaeted against the Shia` sect now. When will the nation learn that one`s religious belief is a very persoanl choice and should have no place is politics.

Thanks, for a brilliantly inspiring eyeview of a wonderful human being. I wish more of us learn from this person`s sense of being. His brilliance is but of-course a gift to all of us.