Mr. Vice
-Chancellor
Only connect!
That is the
theme that runs through the life and work of Abdus Salam. He has
followed the teaching of Islam and has dedicated his life to the
principle of unity -the unity of Nature and the unity of Mankind. As a
natural philosopher he has seen that the various interactions of the
elementary particles must be no more than diverse aspects of a single
primary force. As a political and moral leader he has demonstrated that
the various interactions of nations and cultures are no obstacle to the
brotherhood of Man in science.
In the Faculty of
Science, we honour him as one of the finest theoretical physicists in
the world. In 1950, he was awarded the Smith 's Prize at Cambridge for
an outstanding pre-doctoral contribution to physics. Since then he has
been continually at the working face of the deepest mine that science
has ever pushed down into the bedrock of reality. He has had a major
part in every act of the unfolding drama of the discovery and
understanding of the primary entities of quantum physics. It is
astonishing that a man who is also so active in public affairs should
have published some 200 papers on the physics of elementary particles,
and is still forging ahead in that intensely competitive and dynamic
intellectual enterprise.
In fact, he is still so hard at it that I have not dared
to engrave a tablet of his achievements in physics: tomorrow morning, a
new experimental observation somewhere might add a whole new theory to
the list. Salam has the great scientific gift of suggesting new,
physically realistic, theoretical connections that are really worth the
effort to confirm. The great
theory of the electroweak force, for which he shared the 1979 Nobel
Prize in physics, was first put forward 13 years ago. For the next three
or four years it was totally neglected, because of apparently
insuperable mathematical difficulties. When these had eventually been
cleared away, some very delicate experiments were still needed to test
the mathematical predictions against physical reality. I remember
visiting him in Trieste at that exciting period, with telephone calls
from continent to continent to check up on data that seemed, at first,
to disconfirm his cherished hypothesis. Salam's personal enthusiasm for
physics is delightfully infectious. It was a happy day for us, too, when
his persistence was rewarded, and it came out right after all.
What that theory did
was to show that certain well-known interactions between elementary
particles -for example, the so-called 'weak' force that eventually
drives every neutron to decay into a proton and an electron -could be
treated as part of the much more familiar electro-magnetic force that
acts between all charged particles. It was a hard nut to crack. Compared
with some of your modern mathematical physicists, Salam's methods are
slightly old-fashioned. But he uses such magic sledgehammers as gauge
fields and renormalisation theory with a delicate, practised hand.
Faraday and Maxwell would have been delighted with his achievement,
which is a bit like their unification of magnetism itself with
electricity, more than a century ago.
It is good to see
science unfolding in the traditional manner. That was a scientific
breakthrough in the old style. It has opened the way to yet another
revolution in quantum physics, with the goal of a grand unification of
all the forces of Nature now in clear sight. Perhaps this is only a
mirage -or perhaps another of Abdus Salam's imaginative schemes for the
ultimate construction of matter and energy has got it right, and will
again be confirmed by the observation of a predicted physical phenomenon
that cannot otherwise be explained.
One such prediction
of his current theories is that protons themselves, the building blocks
of all heavy matter in the universe, should not live forever. Just like
neutrons, they should eventually be driven to transform themselves into
lighter particles and radiation by a tiny component of a universal
force. Fortunately, it is a very small effect. Our present day protons
should last a billion, billion times as long as the universe has
already existed
to master all of Salam's theories
fully for myself and then explain them very carefully to this assembly.
Perhaps, Mr.
Vice-Chancellor, you will forego that pleasant exercise, and accept this
worldwide scientific reputation as evidence of his eminent worthiness
for an honorary doctorate in this Faculty. But first, let me present
Abdus Salam to you in another aspect, as one of the first citizens of
the World. He might be considered as just a leading British scientist,
having been Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College, in the
University of London, for more than 20 years But in fact he spends a
good deal of his time in Trieste, in Italy, and lS a frequent visitor to
the United Nations in New York. He is a sort of one-man multinational
corporation, busily transferring intellectual technology to the less
developed countries of the world.
His homeland is
Pakistan, a country to which he remains deeply attached. He was born and
brought up in the city of Jhang, not far from Lahore, that ancient
paradise of Moghul palaces and gardens. From Government College, Lahore,
a scholarship transported him to Cambridge, where he showed his mastery
of all the mathematics and all the physics that any undergraduate could
be permitted to study, and soon had his feet on the swiftly-rising
escalator of research. On that brilliant early achievement and
promise, he went back to Lahore as a Full Professor at the very tender
age of 25. In fact, by ordinary standards of academic success, he was
not all set for a comfortable career.
But the next three
years must have been the most miserable -and formative -of his life. The
old Government College was previously one of the leading academic
institutions of British India -but there was little interest in
scientific research. As Salam recounts it, the head of the college
offered him the choice of three college jobs for any spare time he might
have after his teaching duties. He could become warden of the college
hostel, or chief treasurer of its accounts, or, if he liked, he could
become president of its football club. He says he was fortunate to get
the football club -though I suspect that rival clubs didn't feel that
way!
The most severe
deprivation of those years was the loss of contact with fellow
scientists working on the exciting problems of the day. As he analysed
it later, this was one of the main reasons for the dispirited research
atmosphere in almost all the less developed countries.
Gifted men from
countries such as Pakistan, Brazil, Lebanon or Korea work in advanced
countries in the West or the Soviet Union. They then go back to build
their own indigenous schools. When these men go back to the universities
in their home countries, they were perhaps completely alone; the groups
of which they formed a part were too small to form a critical mass;
there were no good libraries; there was no communication with groups
abroad. There was no criticism of what they were doing; new ideas
reached them too slowly; their work fell back within the grooves of what
they were doing before they left the stimulating environments of the
institutions at which they had studied in the West or the
Soviet Union. These men were isolated, and isolation in theoretical
physics -as in most fields of intellectual work -is death. This was the
pattern when I became associated with Lahore University!
Even a thoroughly
self-winding genius such as a young Salam could not accept this danger
of being slowly buried alive. In 1954 he came back to England, and was
soon established in his chair in London. Although he never lost his
close personal and professional contacts with his home country, and he
takes special pride in being the first Pakistani to win a Nobel Prize,
he has not returned to a regular academic appointment in that country.
But Abdus Salam is a man
whose heart is as great as his mind. The memory of those anguished years
of isolation did not turn sour within him: it became the creative kernel
of his greatest achievement. He vowed to provide the means by which
other talented young scientists, from less developed countries, could
keep themselves from scholarly death by isolation, without having to
desert their native lands.
A single line in his biodata records that he has been
Director of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics at Trieste
since 1964. There is more in that title than the fifty awards he has won
from universities and national academies around the world. He created
that Centre out of nothing: it is now one of the most successful and
respected international institutions of our times. Scientists from
developing countries come to Trieste to get the latest scientific news,
to learn the latest techniques, and to meet their colleagues from both
advanced and developing countries. They come to attend advanced courses,
or to work quietly in the library; to argue vehemently with some very
bright young chap from Indonesia, or to acquire understanding and
insight from a very wise old Professor from Sweden. It is a bustling
railway junction of the intellect, out
of the handsome
buildings it acquired only a few years ago, managed by the brilliant
improvisations of a devoted staff, and always short of funds Yet it
lives, and works, and grows, and serves the whole world of the physical
sciences
How was it done? How did
that most abstruse of young professors persuade the hard-headed
delegates of lumbering international organisations such as the
International Atomic Energy Agency, and UNESCO, to put their money into
such an out-of-the-way project? How did he so befriend the Italian
Government that they gave such support in cash and kind? In these past
few years of declining funds and proliferating bureaucracy how has the
Centre managed to remain alive and flourishing in the interstices of a
system that has brought much grander projects to frustrations?
The Trieste Centre was
created, and continues to thrive, through a singular force - the personal
willpower of its Director Let me warn you, Mr Vice-Chancellor, that
Abdus Salam is a manifestation of that imaginary concept of mechanics
-the irresistible force Suppose he asks you to do a little favour for
him -say a three-week visit to the University of Vladivostock You will
find you have only three possible responses The first is, "But Abdus,
that's completely forbidden by my religion I shall be damned to eternity
if I go to Vladivostock in August" The second is, "Very sorry, old chap,
but all that month I'm absolutely committed to lecturing in Bogota" Most
commonly, however, the only remaining degree of freedom is "Yes -how do
I get there?", and off you go He seems to have rhat effect on everyone
he meets - politicians, government officIals, international bureaucrats
and fellow scientists He impresses and persuades by the integrity,
purity, and singleness of his purpose, put into the service of his
fellow men
Originally, the Trieste
Centre was for the highest of pure science, setting standards of
excellence for Third World physics at the most advanced level But
Salam's own experience, both in directing the Centre and as a
participant in science policy making for successive governments of
Pakistan from about 1960 to 1974, taught him to widen the objectives of
science for countries struggling for economic and social development
Over the years, the programme of associateships, advanced courses,
seminars, workshops and conferences at Trieste has broadened, to foster
and coordinate research in all fields of applicable science Salam speaks
now for the special role of the trained scientist in this development
process and for the need for national and international scientific
institutions which will make that role attractive and productive. He has
thrown his personal charisma, and the immense prestige of his Nobel
Prize into a worldwide campaign to establish the essential
infrastructure, that can give aid and advice to the smallest and poorest
nations in their efforts towards self- development.
In
both spheres of
philosophy, natural and social, Abdus Salam strives continually to
'connect'. Along that way he has already achieved such a unification of
Nature, such a realisation of the ideal of human brother- hood, that it
is very proper that we should do him honour, Mr. Vice- Chancellor, to
present him to you as one eminently worthy of the degree of Doctor of
Science - honoris causa.
