Annual award given by the family of Abdus Salam
The family of Nobel Prize winner Abdus Salam have set up the Spirit of Abdus Salam Award. The award is announced annually on the occasion of the ICTP Salam Distinguished Lectures, held at ICTP during the last week of January to coincide with Abdus Salam's birthday on 29 January.
Abdus Salam is primarily remembered for his scientific work, but his family wish him to also be remembered for his humility of spirit and humanitarian passion and zeal which ultimately led to the creation of ICTP and TWAS.
The Award, consisting of a certificate and a cash amount of Euro 1000, recognises those within the extended ICTP family of scientists and non-scientists, and administrative staff alike who have worked tirelessly to further Abdus Salam's humanitarian passion and vision for the cooperation, promotion and development of science and technology in the developing world. This could be shown by an associate, visitor or professor who has gone beyond the call of duty to try and help fellow students and academics in ICTP or their own country; or members of ICTP or TWAS staff who have gone beyond their duties to assist and support others. Self nominations are discouraged.
Abdus Salam
A Nobel laureate known for his humility of spirit and humanitarian passion
ICTP founder Abdus Salam was a Pakistani theoretical physicist and a Nobel Prize laureate, sharing the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg for his contribution to the electroweak unification theory. He was the first Pakistani and the first from an Islamic country to receive a Nobel Prize in science. It was in 1960 at the IAEA's Fourth General Conference that the 34-year-old Salam suggested the founding of an international theoretical physics institute open to scientists from around the world. That proposal became a reality in 1963 when the General Conference of the IAEA signed an agreement with the Italian Government to establish ICTP in Trieste. The following year, the Centre opened its doors, with Abdus Salam as the Centre's director.
Nominees for the award could be an associate, visitor or professor who has gone beyond the call of duty to try and help fellow students and academics in ICTP or their own country, or a member of ICTP or TWAS staff who again has gone beyond their duties to assist and support others. Self nominations are discouraged.