Abdus Salam from Fundamental Interactions to the Origin of Life

Abstract

Abdus Salam made many contributions to the science of the elementary interactions. He contributed, in particular, to the creation of the theory that unifies the electromagnetic and weak nuclear interactions. For this achievement he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979. I first met Salam in the second week of June 1968, during the inauguration of what is now known as the ‘old wing’ of the Main Building of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), which now bears his name. Earlier still, during the spring of 1966, while I was a graduate student at the University of London, I attended a series of two lectures at Imperial College. Salam delivered at that time an extended summary of his original work on the gauge theory of the weak nuclear interaction.