Abdus Salam was born in small town of Jhang, in 1926.[12] Salam's father was an education officer in the Department of Education of British Punjab State in a poor farming district. Salam's family had a long tradition of piety and passion for learning.[12]
At age fourteen, Salam scored the highest marks ever recorded for the Matriculation Examination at the Punjab University.[13] He won a full sch
olarship to the Government College University of Lahore, British Punjab State.[14] Salam was a versatile scholar, interested in Urdu and English literature in which he excelled.[15] But, soon picked up Mathematics as his concentration.[16] As a fourth-year student there, he published his work on Srinivasa Ramanujan's problems in mathematics, and took his B.A. in Mathematics from the Government College University in 1946.[12] That same year, he was awarded a scholarship to St. John's College, Cambridge University, where he completed a BA degree with Double First-Class Honours in Mathematics and Physics in 1949.[18] In 1950, he received the Smith's Prize from Cambridge University for the most outstanding pre-doctoral contribution to Physics.[19]
He obtained a Ph.D degree in Theoretical Physics from Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge.[20][21] His doctoral thesis contained comprehensive and fundamental work in Quantum Electrodynamics.[22] By the time it was published in 1951, it had already gained him an international reputation and the Adams Prize.[23]
