By Faiza Zafar, APIASF/GMS Scholar
Dr. Abdus Salam, Steven Weinberg, and Sheldon L. Glashow were the three recipients of Nobel Prize in physics in 1979. Three of them worked separately but determinedly to achieve the goal of Einstein; which was to unify all the four forces of nature into a single one. Fortunately, these three great scientists unified two out of the four forces and achieved this great honor and distinction.
I chose to write about Dr. Abdus Salam because he was the first Pakistani to receive such an honor. As we all know, Pakistan is a prominent country in Asia. In addition to being the first Pakistani, he was also the first Muslim to receive Nobel Prize in Science and Asia has 70% Muslims. Dr. Abdus Salam despite being a first Pakistani and Muslim to receive such an honor is considered a forgotten hero. It is because Pakistanis and Muslims try to not give that much fame to him as he belongs to a sect in Islam which extremists consider Non-Muslims. In Pakistan, Dr Salam received some recognition at government level, but he was not allowed to visit universities and colleges to lecture and meet with students as he had wanted to because certain extremist students had threatened to burn down the halls where he was scheduled to speak since he belong to a different group of Muslims. These were the obstacles which he faced later in his life; now, let me start with his early life.