Abdus Salam - Blue Plaque

The Blue Plaque was erected in 2020 by English Heritage, and is recognising Abdus Salam, a physicist and Nobel Prize laureate, who lived at a semi-detached house in Putney, London from 1957 until his death in 1996 (1).  The plaque reads ‘Adbus Salam 1926-1996 Physicist, Nobel Laureate and champion of science in developing countries lived here’.

Biography

Abdus Salam was born in Jhang, in present day Pakistan in 1926. With excellent academic achievements in Pakistan, he was awarded a scholarship at the University of Punjab in 1946 to undertake a MA, as well as a scholarship to St Johns College at University of Cambridge (2). He came to the UK to study physics and gained his BA in 1948 and his PhD in 1952 from Cambridge University (5). In 1950 he received the Smith’s Prize from Cambridge University for ‘most outstanding pre-doctoral contribution to physics’ (2). He left Cambridge in 1957 to join Imperial College in London, as Professor of Theoretical Physics, a post he held for more than 30 years (5).

He was a member of the Scientific Commission of Pakistan, the Chief Scientific Advisor for the Pakistani president from 1961 to 1974 (2) and played an important role in Pakistan’s development of nuclear energy (5). Abdus Salam belonged to the Ahmadiyya minority community and therefore resigned from his advisory post in Pakistan when President Zulkifar Ali Bhutto passed a law that declared Ahmadiyya as non-Muslim in 1974 (1).

In 1979 he and his colleagues (Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg) received the Nobel Prize in Physics (6). He was the first Pakistani to win the Nobel Prize. The English Heritage entry further notes him as the first Muslim to receive the Noble Prize in the science category.

Throughout his life he was an advocate in the areas of science and education in developing countries (3). He founded the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy in 1964 (3), which links scientists from developing countries with colleagues from all over the world (4). This endeavour was supported by the Italian government and sponsored by the UN and the IAEA. Salam served as its director from 1964 to 1993 (4). Further, he was the chair of the UNESCO advisory panel on science, technology and society in 1981 (1). Amongst many awards, appointments, and other distinctions, he was also awarded the Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1986 (6)

Abdus Salam was married to his wife Hafiza, and later to Louise Johnson. He divided his time between Oxford, Trieste and London (1). He died in Oxford in 1996 and is buried in Rabwah in Pakistan. In 2018 a documentary film about his life was released with the title ‘ 'Salam - The First ****** Nobel Laureate', which references his gravestone where the word ‘Muslim’ was scrubbed out (3) and remains so until today (1).