By Pervez Hoodbhoy
The Economist magazine should really have mentioned both Weinberg and Salam. A bit of history: Peter Higgs of Edinburgh University had discovered in the 1960’s a very general principle by which elementary particles could go from being massless to having mass. But it was just a nice mathematical idea and no one knew what this had to do with the actual particles that constitute the world we happen to live in. Then, working separately on different continents, Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam realized that if a Higgs particle of the right kind actually existed then everything we know about particles like the electron and quark could be understood within overarching theory. Their theory is called the Glashow-Salam-Weinberg model, or “Standard Model” of particle physics. This is just about the most important discovery in physics in the last 40 years. (Sheldon Glashow of Harvard didn’t have anything to do with the Higgs particle; his Nobel Prize work was important in a different way.)
I might mention that there are all kinds of Higgs particles in physics (e.g. in superconductivity), but they don’t all have to do with fundamental physics. The Higgs discovered at CERN was the Weinberg-Salam Higgs.
Thanks to Prof. Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy of the Physics Deptt., Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan, for his timely act of a little bit correcting the background history of the three Nobel Prize winner Phyicists (of 1979),namely Dr. Abdus Salam,(Pakistan),Dr. Sheldon Glashow and Dr. Steven Weinberg of USA for their independent research/results regarding the Standard Model Theory of particle Physics. But the CERN Higgs experiment is related to only two Physicists of particle physics and it was conducted in the 27 KM long tunnel,constructed at huge cost,300 feet below the earth surface, near Geneva, called LHC( Large Hadran Collider) laboratory and its results on July 4, 2012, confirmed the prediction of Dr. Salam and Dr. Weinberg, due to which, the names of these two physicists, will be remembered in the history of scientific discoveries as ‘Salam+Weinberg Higgs’, the discovery of the ultimate,minutest,the tinniest single unit ‘entity’, given the name of’God-particle”, the final Creator of the whole Universe in which we live a life of all sorts of pleasures, comforts and enjoyments, singing the songs of the glorifications of God Almighty.Alhamdolillah, all praise to God Almighty.Ameen.
Aameen
nice idea “salam-weinberg-higgs-boson” though a bit long. One should not forget any scientist from his discovery. Like in the theory of higgsboson there were about 7 scientist (or perhaps more but 7 major). But nice from Prof Hoodhbhoy not to forget these two major names.
It is interesting to note that whereas, the particle has been named God particle, among these two pioneering contributers Dr. Abdus Salam is a Muslim theist, while Steven Weinberg is an atheist.
Probably because religion is more cloudy than science although to the honest mind the truth is still out there. (i.e. religious facts require a greater degree of honesty to accept than scientific facts)