Summary

The film Salam: The First ****** Nobel Laureate begins and ends with a gravestone in a quiet mass cemetery in Pakistan. We see the deceased’s name: “Professor Muhammad Abdus Salam,” followed by his birth and death dates, 1926 and 1996, and a puzzling inscription that declares that Salam “in 1979 became the first Nobel laureate for his work in physics.” As the camera lingers, it becomes clear that a word has been painted out between “first” and “Nobel.” But only after watching the film do we comprehend it: “Muslim.”