Abdus Salam

Facts

Abdus Salam

Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.

Abdus Salam
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1979

Born: 29 January 1926, Jhang Maghiāna, India (now Pakistan)

Died: 21 November 1996, Oxford, United Kingdom

Affiliation at the time of the award: International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy; Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Prize motivation: “for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current”

Prize share: 1/3

Work

According to modern physics, four fundamental forces exist in nature. Electromagnetic interaction is one of these. The weak interaction—responsible, for example, for the beta decay of nuclei—is another. Thanks to contributions made by Abdus Salam, Sheldon Glashow,and Steven Weinberg in 1968, these two interactions were unified to one single, called electroweak. The theory predicted, for example, that weak interaction manifests itself in “neutral weak currents” when certain elementary particles interact. This was later confirmed.

To cite this section
MLA style: Abdus Salam – Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Sat. 23 Sep 2023. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1979/salam/facts/>

Back to top Back To Top Takes users back to the top of the page

Coming up

This year’s Nobel Prize announcements will take place 2–9 October. All announcements will be streamed live here on nobelprize.org.

See the full schedule
Announcement dates

Explore prizes and laureates

Look for popular awards and laureates in different fields, and discover the history of the Nobel Prize.