Dr. Abdus salam in the words of Dr. Pervaiz hoodbhoy. some excerpts from his article.
[QUOTE]
Fascinating encounters: Prof Abdus Salam
Pervez Hoodbhoy
Professor of high-energy physics, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad.
Courtesy: The Dawn
..................
Salam's talent for physics and mathematics soon brought him fame and recognition after he set off to England on a scholarship. In 1949 he earned a first-class degree in physics from Cambridge University in just a year. Then in 1950 he solved an important problem in renormalization theory and instantly became a minor celebrity. I*n 1951 he returned to Government College, Lahore, but found to his disappointment that research was not encouraged - even frowned upon.* Without a library or colleagues to talk to, he reluctantly went back to Britain in 1954.
........
How great a scientist was Salam? This is an important question because in our country one has to chart a delicate course between the Scylla of adulation and hyperbole, and the Charybdis of stupidity and prejudice. An honest answer is made still more unlikely because there is no community of scientists in Pakistan which can understand and sensibly evaluate his work.
The truth is that Abdus Salam was not Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein or Richard Feynman; he never claimed otherwise and would have felt deeply uncomfortable if someone else had claimed this for him. **But his achievement of unifying two basic forces of nature has had greater impact upon the development of physics, and is deeper and more profound, than the works of most other Nobel prize winners in this century. **Today unification theory is a touchstone of modern physics. Although it is not Salam's only important work - the full spectrum is much too broad to cover here - it certainly is his most important one.
.......
Intensely proud of the Muslim contributions to science and civilisation, and upset at how they are usually forgotten or sidelined, Salam would gently but eloquently admonish Western audiences for their ignorance. Significantly, he began his Nobel Prize speech about the travel of the Michael the Scot to Muslim Spain in the search for knowledge; in those days the lands of Islam were the sole repositories of learning. Before Muslim audiences he would make passionate exhortations that Muslims should re-enter the world of science and technology before they became utterly marginalized. Nothing hurt him more than the stony barrenness of the intellect in Islamic countries today. He was deeply mortified, he recalled, when a Nobel Prize winner in physics said to him: "Salam, do you really think we have an obligation to succour, aid, and keep alive those nations who have never created or added an iota to man's stock of knowledge?"
............
**Salam's epoch-making achievements as a scientist stand in stark contrast with his dismal failure to bring science back to Islam. It was not for lack of trying, but nothing ever really worked. **The Islamic Science Foundation, a grand scheme for scientific advancement with an endowment of $1 billion collected from oil-rich countries, came to nought after Salam was banned from ever setting foot in Saudi Arabia. Kuwait and Iran did give some money for supporting their scientists at the ICTP, but the amounts were niggardly. Promises by kings, princes, and emirs remained promises. Salam's efforts did contribute towards creating at least some of the score or so organizations whose raison d'etre is to accelerate science and technology in Muslim countries. But these organizations provide nothing but cushy jobs for those who sit at their helms, and they are no more than litter on the landscape today.
Salam died on the November 20, 1996. He was buried, according to his request, in Pakistan. No minister or high government official attended his funeral. For the Islamic world, deep in medieval slumber, it was a non-event.
[/QUOTE]