Abdus Salam

"By generalization of methods developed by Kamefuchi, O'Raifeartaigh, and Salam, conditions for renormalizability of general gauge theories of massive vector mesons are derived. ... It is shown that all theories based on simple Lie groups (with the one exception of the neutral vector meson theory in interaction with a conserved current) are unrenormalizable."

"In the Holy Book of Islam, Allah says: "Thou seest not, in the creation of the All-merciful any imperfection, Return thy gaze, seest thou any fissure. Then Return thy gaze, again and again. Thy gaze, Comes back to thee dazzled, aweary." This in effect is, the faith of all physicists; the deeper we seek, the more is our wonder excited, the more is the dazzlement for our gaze."

"The Holy Quran enjoins us to reflect on the verities of Allah’s created laws of nature; however, that our generation has been privileged to glimpse a part of His design is a bounty and a grace for which I render thanks with a humble heart."

"Pakistan might have put Salam’s face on a stamp but would not grant him his freedom of religion or [civil] rights, not even in death."

"Salam's work was based on an imaginative synthesis of mathematical structures and in this style he followed his mentor Paul Dirac. He was also interested in mysticism and he took his religion of Ahmadi Islam very seriously. He was intrigued by ancient Indian ideas. In one conversation with me, he brought up the question of the age of the universe given in the Purāṇas. He wanted to understand, if at all that was possible, how the present cycle in Purāṇic cosmology is about the same number as the estimate of the time of the Big Bang. It is remarkable that he sought to bring opposites together in his mind, but this was at a high cost. He lived in two worlds and he wished to be faithful to both. He had simultaneous loyalties to Pakistan and his physics; to the traditions of his Rajput ancestry and his religion; and to his two wives, one Punjabi and the other English."

"Salam, as an observant religious Ahmadi Muslim, was aware of the ambiguity of his community's position. He responded to his expulsion by spending even more time in his pieties. But his enemies were relentless, and when he went to Pakistan after he had been awarded the Nobel Prize, he was barred from entering the premises of any university. For Salam his sorrows did not end with his excommunication or death. In Pakistan he is a non-person and his name is not mentioned in textbooks. The popular press has concocted wild conspiracies of nuclear espionage against him."