In his speech at the 1979 Nobel Prize banquet, Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam called on the nations of the world to foster science in developing countries. No region, he said, should have a monopoly on the discipline: “The creation of physics is the shared heritage of all mankind. East and West, North and South have equally participated in it.”
Salam—who shared his Nobel with U.S. physicists Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Lee Glashow for identifying the electroweak force, the brief union of two of nature’s four fundamental interactions—concluded his address with a challenge: “Let us strive to provide equal opportunities to all so that they can engage in the creation of physics and science for the benefit of all mankind.”
Salam lived this ideal, devoting himself to the promotion of science in the Middle East. He publicly called on the region’s...
