Abdus Salam

Born on 29 January 1926 in Jhang, a rural community in what is now Pakistan, Abdus Salam was a theoretical physicist who codeveloped electroweak theory and was the first Muslim scientist to win a Nobel Prize. Salam attended Punjab University and then Cambridge University, where he earned a PhD in 1952. In the 1960s he and, independently, Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg, identified a symmetry that is shared in a class of field theories by the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces. The symmetry implied that the two forces are really different manifestations of the same force, which Salam named electroweak. Glashow, Salam, and Weinberg’s unification also predicted the existence of two bosons: W, which mediates beta decay, and Z, which mediates the transfer of momentum, spin, and energy in neutrino scattering. In 1973 a clear manifestation of the Z was discovered in CERN’s Gargamelle bubble chamber. Six years later Glashow, Salam, and Weinberg were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics . Salam was also a founder of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, which has supported the studies of physicists from the developing world since its founding in 1964. He died in 1996 at age 70. (Photo credit: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Marshak Collection)

Date in History: 29 January 1926