37 years: too late, too little

The Physics Centre of Quaid-e-Azam University, 37 years after he won the Nobel Prize will at last carry his name


Anjum Niaz December 14, 2016
The writer is a journalist with over 30 years of experience

It’s been the longest journey for a nation to honour its hero. The Physics Centre of Quaid-e-Azam University, 37 years after he won the Nobel Prize will at last carry his name. Shall we then salute Nawaz Sharif after waking up in his third term as prime minister of Pakistan, to remember the Nobel Laureate! Well, it’s better late than never. Still, the gesture is not big-league to make waves. Besides, setting up five annual fellowships for Pakistani Ph.D. students in the field of Physics to study abroad called the ‘Professor Abdus Salam Fellowship programme’ is akin to taking baby steps. I would have given the PM two thumbs up had he created a centre of excellence to name after him, not just a department.

It was the summer of 1964. My parents and I were guests of Queen Elizabeth’s garden party at Buckingham Palace. Our embassy in London had instructed us to arrive in good time to be let in. Dutifully, we waited at the iron gates of the Palace, clutching our invitations to the royal tea party that the Queen and the Duke routinely held every year. While waiting in the queue, we spotted a man with a huge turban. He was walking towards us with a lady behind him. It was Professor Abdus Salam and his wife. He was dressed in his native outfit sporting a big turban that men back in Jhang wear. His wife wore a simple, non-descript shalwar kamiz. We chatted until the gates opened to let us in. Salam, at that time was the Chief Scientific Adviser to President Ayub. He wanted Pakistan to have a nuclear programme. A year later, he succeeded in establishing the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology, better known as PINSTECH, located at Nilor, outside Islamabad.

It was this great man who set up the International Nathiagali Summer College on Physics and Contemporary Needs (INSC). It continues till today. Every summer, scientists from all over the world arrive in Nathiagali for the annual INSC where theyinteract with Pakistani scientists.

For this alone, Dr Abdus Salam should have received the highest recognition from Pakistan. But what he got instead was rejection. Even when he died in 1996 at Oxford, Pakistan didn’t want to own him. The epitaph on his tomb in a cemetery reserved for the Ahmadiyya community in Jhang district initially read “First Muslim Nobel Laureate” but, because his community had been declared ‘non-Muslims,’ the word “Muslim” was later erased allegedly on the orders of a local magistrate, leaving just the words “First Nobel Laureate.”



Okay, we need not have called him a ‘Muslim.’ But the word on his gravestone could have been replaced by the word ‘Pakistani!’ Sixteen years after Salam’s death, Syed Babar Ali, Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences wanted to createan Abdus Salam Chair at LUMS. But it took them another 3 years before setting up the Chair due to lack of funds. As one of the most respected educational institutions in Pakistan, surely wealthy Pakistanis, especially Lahoris, could have opened their wallets to fund a Chair named after their first Nobel Prize winner in science Pakistan will perhaps ever have? Still, Kudosto Syed Babar Ali and his vice chancellor Adil Najam for actively participating in the fundraising.

It was at Imperial College, London, where Dr Salam completed his Nobel-winning work to be awarded the Nobel Prize in 1979. He was not only one of the great physicists of the last century, he was the man who put his heart and soul in establishing the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, and the Third World Academy of Sciences founded in 1983, also in Trieste. Dr Salam shared a belief that “developing nations, by building strength in science and engineering, could build the knowledge and skill to address such challenges as hunger, disease and poverty.”

But the most significant work begun by Abdus Salam almost half a century before, led to the discovery of the subatomic “God Particle” in 2012. This was the missing link in the scientific understanding of Creation. Finally, scientists could reach into the “fabric of the Universe at a level” they had never done before — finding proof of an invisible energy that fills the vacuum of space. Who creates this energy? The divine ‘God Particle.’ To discover it consumed two years, 7000 scientists, and $10 billion. The experiment was conducted underground on the Switzerland-French border.

That was the moment to remind the world that the man who pointed to the direction of “God Particle” and won the Nobel Prize for doing so, was a Pakistani. The then president Asif Zardari and his prime minister Raja Ashraf could have seized the opportunity to acknowledge the scientist as their own and made a bang, big enough for the world to sit up and take note. Instead, the two politician VVIPs, perhaps ignorant of world affairs; science and technology; and the latest discovery announced in Geneva; were more interested in acquiring penthouses in Europe and America, fattening their foreign assets and saving their Swiss accounts. Cashing in on Salam’s pioneering work to build a better image for Pakistan was their least priority. They may not even have known who Abdus Salam was. They cannot be faulted because thanks to the religious obscurantists, Salam’s name had been struck off. He did not exist for the Pakistanis.

Even today, naysayers like head of the Council of Islamic Ideology Maulana Mohammad Khan Sherani Sherani, have criticised the naming of the Physics Centre at QAU after Dr Abdus Salam. It’s time to educate and inform the largely ignoramus mass about the extraordinary genius that the city of Jhang produced. Let’s all be openly proud of the man. And never mind the faith he practiced. Let’s put an end to religious bigotry.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 15th, 2016.

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COMMENTS (5)

Imran Ahsan Mirza | 7 years ago | Reply Excellent article. Dr Salam was a great Physicist, the one amongst very few, who deciphered the phenomenon of nature of various forces.
RHS | 7 years ago | Reply Thank you Anjum Niaz Sahiba for trying to explain to Pakistanis that the country belongs to all of its inhabitants! Dr. Salam was an Ahmadi. So What? He was a great scientific mind and his religious beliefs should have no bearing on how he should be honored in Pakistan!
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