Editors Note: Abdus Salam is very well known for his getting a Nobel Prize, but very few people including Pakistani know that in 1968 he was also given “Atoms for Peace Prize”. It is said that he devoted most of this money to a scholarship fund created for the purpose of Pakistani students to visit the ICTP in Trieste to get state of the art knowledge.  Here below is a collection of articles on that issue. Salam was an ardent member of the Ahmadiyya Movement and was deeply attached to Islam and Qur’an, amply clear from the excerpts of his speech on the occasion of getting the Nobel Prize.

The 16th death anniversary of Pakistan’s famous scientist and only Nobel laureate Dr. Abdus Salam was observed on 21st November‚ 2012. (Wednesday)He used his share of the Nobel Prize money entirely for the benefit of physicists from developing countries. The money he received from the Atoms for Peace Medal and Award was spent on setting up a fund for young Pakistani physicists.

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Dr. Abdus Salam died on November 21‚ 1996 at the age of 70 in Oxford‚ England after a protracted illness.

Wikipedia

Salam was member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community^[102] who saw his religion as fundamental part of his scientific work. He once wrote:

“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.”^[31]

During his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Physics, Salam quoted the following verses from the Quran:

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.

He then said:

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.^[103]

On his love for Pakistan:

In August 1996, the former chairman of PAEC and lifelong friend, Munir Ahmad Khan and met Salam in Oxford. Munir Ahmad Khan (late), who headed the nuclear weapons and energy programme, said:

“My last meeting with Abdus Salam was only three months ago. His disease had taken its toll and he was unable to talk. Yet he understood what was said. I told him about the celebration held in Pakistan on his seventieth birthday. He kept staring at me. He had risen above praise. As I rose to leave he pressed my hand to express his feelings as if he wanted to thank everyone who had said kind words about him. Dr. Abdus Salam had deep love for Pakistan in spite of the fact that he was treated unfairly and indifferently by his own country. It became more and more difficult for him to come to Pakistan and this hurt him deeply. Now he has returned home finally, to rest in peace for ever in the soil that he loved so much. May be in the years to come we will rise above our prejudice and own him and give him, after his death, what we could not when he was alive. We Pakistanis may choose to ignore Dr. Salam, but the world at large will always remember him.”^[1]

http://libraries.mit.edu

Atoms for Peace, Inc. was formed by the Ford Motor Company as a memorial to Henry and Edsel Ford to present awards to those who made contributions to the peaceful uses of atomic energy. In August 1955, James R. Killian, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, accepted the invitation of Henry Ford II to serve as chairman of the Organization and Planning Committee for the Atoms for Peace awards. The directors of the Ford Motor Company authorized an appropiation of one million dollars at a rate of $100,000 annually for ten years. Ten awards were given, the first in 1957, and the last in 1969. The collection consists of the records of executive secretary Bryce Leggett, and includes minutes of meetings and biographies of nominees.

Alislam.org

As “Servant of Peace”

1. Member, Scientific Council, SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) (1970)
2. Awarded the Atoms for Peace Medal and Award (Atoms for peace foundation) (1968)
3. Peace Medal (Charles University, Prague) (1981)
4. Premio Umberto Biancamano, Italy (1968)
5. Dayemi International Peace Award (Bangladesh) (1986)
6. Member, Council, University for Peace, Costa Rica (1981-86)

IAEA.org

ATOMS FOR PEACE AWARDS
In making their annual selection for 1968 the Atoms for Peace Award Trust  has paid signal tribute to the Agency.  Each of the three recipients has for  many years contributed to its work.  Sigvard Eklund, Abdus Salam and Henry DeWolf Smyth received their  gold medallion and $30 000 honorarium at a ceremony in New York on 14  October this year. All of them have achieved high distinction in science,  but their greatest efforts have been to make the world aware of the benefits to be gained from using nuclear knowledge for peace, health and prosperity. A native of Sweden, Dr. Sigvard Eklund received his Ph. D. from the University of Uppsala. He began his scientific career at the Nobel Institute for Physics in Stockholm. From 1946-1950, he worked as Senior Scientist  at the Research Institute for National Defence in Stockholm. He was for ten
years a member of the technical physics faculty at the Royal Institute of  Technology, and in 1950 was appointed Director of Research and Deputy to the Managing Director of AB Atomenergi in Stockholm, and from 1957-1961 was Director of the Reactor Development Division in the same company.  Dr. Eklund was a pioneer in reactor development, and, under his direction, the first Swedish research reactor was build and started in 1954. It was one of the first to be built outside the present major nuclear powers.  In 1958, he was Secretary-General of the Second UN International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva.
He was named Director General of the Agency in 1961. Since then the Agency has developed and put into practice international safeguards against the diversion of peaceful nuclear activities to military purposes. The confidence placed in this system was demonstrated this year by the signature  of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the control functions of which have been entrusted to the Agency.

He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences  and this year he was named honorary Doctor of Philosophy by the University of Graz. Abdus Salam, whose name means “Servant of Peace”, has applied much of his almost unlimited energy in recent years to the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, inaugurated largely through his initiative  in 1964. His aim has been to provide a centre where the latest ideas in physics can be examined by scientists from all nations, and at the same time to create a means of enabling scientist from developing countries to maintain contact with current knowledge without having to leave their home countries permanently — one method of limiting the “brain drain” from 10 developing to advanced countries. The outstanding s u c c e ss of his project was acknowledged at a gathering this year in Triest e of many of the world’ s leading p h y s i c i s t s. On that occasion the whole range of m o d e r n physic s was reviewed. In furthering the cause of peace Professor Salam’ s success in a r r a n g i ng collaborative work between distinguished scientists of many countries has been a significant contribution to the cause of peace.

Born in West Pakistan, he started his academic caree r by gaining first  place in the Punjab University  matriculation at the age of 20, followed by a Double First at St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1949. He was an elected Fellow at St. John’ s for six years while also serving as a Professor in Lahore and then as a lecture r at Cambridge. Since 1957 he has occupied the Chair of Theoretica l Physic s at Imperia l College, London, was a scientific secretary at the first two Geneva Conferences on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, is a member of the UN Advisory Committee on Science and Technology, is Scientific Adviser to the President of Pakistan, and has been Director of the Trieste Centre since its foundation.
It was in 1945 that Henry DeWolf Smyth1s name became a houshold wordalthough he was noted as a scientist before then — with the publication of the Smyth Report on Atomic Energy. It explained much of what had, during the war years, been veiled in secrecy and undoubtedly stimulatedeven greater interest than hitherto in the potentialities of this new source of power. He was also one of the two men (the other being Dr. John A. Hall, now a Deputy Director General of the Agency) who advised President Eisenhower in p r e -paring his “Atoms for Peace” speech to the UN in 1953 from which the Agency developed. A native of the State of New York, he graduated from Princeton University, with which he has been associated ever since in teaching, r e –
s e a r c h and administration. F r om 1949 to 1954 he was C o m m i s s i o n e r of  the US Atomic Energy Commission, and has filled a number of consulting role s to help in developing nuclear power source s and policies for peaceful utilization of that power. Since 1961 he has been US Representative to the Agency and a m e m b e r of the Board of Governors, where his guidance and views have always commanded attention. During the s a me period he has been an advise r to the US State Department in m a t t e rs concerning i n t e rnational a g r e e m e n ts connected with the peaceful u s e s of nuclea r energy. This is the eighth time awards have been made by t r u s t e e s under an Atoms for Peac e programme established as a memoria l to Henry Ford and his son Edsel in respons e to President Eisenhower’ s appeal at Geneva in 1955 for international efforts to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
Other recipients have been the late Niels Bohr, of Denmark; George C. de Hevesy, Sweden; Eugene P . Wigner and the late Leo Szilard of USA, jointly; Alvin M. Weinberg and Walter H. Zinn of USA, jointly; the late Sir John Cockcroft, UK; Edward M. McMillan, USA, and the lat e Vladimir I. Veksler, USSR, jointly; and Bertrand L. Goldschmidt, France, W. Bennett Lewis, Canada, and Isidor I. Rabi, USA, jointly.