8 minutes agoAuthor: Sanyukt Kulshreshtha
Every culture has an extraordinary story involving a student and a teacher, so do India and Pakistan. The protagonist of this story is the first Nobel Prize winner of Pakistan, Professor Abdus Salam, who had a strong dedication and admiration for his Indian ‘Guru’.
In 1979, a professor from Pakistan, Abdus Salam, won the first Nobel Prize for his country in the field of Physics. The prize was jointly shared by Sheldon Lee Glashow, Abdus Salam, and Steven Weinberg for laying the groundwork for the discovery of the Higgs Boson, which is popularly known as the ‘God Particle’.
Today, on 5th September, when India celebrates Teacher’s Day, let us remember a student from Pakistan who dedicated his life’s biggest accomplishment to his maths teacher from India.
Dr Abdus Salam (centre) won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics alongside Sheldon Lee Glashow (left) and Steven Weinberg (right).
Who is Abdus Salam?
Born in 1926, Salam has his family ensastry deeprooted into education. His father was an official at the local department of education in the district of Jhang of then British India.
According to the records of the Nobel Prize Foundation, at the age of 14, Salam had gained the highest marks ever recorded in the Matriculation Examination at the University of the Punjab.
His genius-level intellect soon got him a scholarship to Government College, University of the Punjab in 1946. The same year, he was awarded a scholarship to St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he took a BA (honours) in mathematics and physics in 1949.
In 1950, he received the Smith’s Prize from Cambridge University for the most outstanding pre-doctoral contribution to physics. He also obtained a PhD in theoretical physics at Cambridge for his thesis published in 1951.
The same year, Salam returned to Pakistan and taught at institutions like Government College, Lahore, and in 1952, he became the head of the Mathematics Department of the Punjab University.
He was later given the lectureship at Cambridge, where he accomplished his peak work in the field of Physics, which ultimately led him to the Nobel Prize.
Image of Dr Abdus Salam in a classroom.
The student-teacher relationship that crossed borders After winning the Nobel Prize in 1979, Salam submitted an unusual request to the Indian government. This request urged the authorities to locate his long-lost teacher named Anilendra Ganguly.
Ganguly was a professor of mathematics and had taught Salam when he studied at the Sanatan Dharma College in Lahore. Professor Ganguly had migrated from Pakistan to India after the partition.
The task took two years, and finally, the professor of Pakistan’s first Nobel Prize winner was located in South Kolkata on January 19, 1981.
The meeting of two geniuses
In 1981, Professor Slalam finally won his mentor. Reports from that time suggest that Salam’s teacher was by then very old and weak and could not even get out of bed to greet his student.
Several reports suggest that Salam had taken his Nobel Prize medal while meeting his mentor.
Dr Abdus Salam meeting Professor Anilendra Ganguly in 1981.
Dr Abdus Salam meeting Professor Anilendra Ganguly in 1981.
The student’s final submission Zia H Shah MD, a New York-based physician and Chief Editor of the Muslim Times, in an article relating to the incident, claims that Salam took his medal and said that this medal is a result of your teaching and love of mathematics that you instilled in me,’ and he put the medal around his teacher’s neck.
The same Nebel medal still resides and is preserved in the Maulana Azad Library at the Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh.
