Talented students of Balochistan, Sindh and Kyber Pakhttunkhwa on Thursday visited the Government College University Lahore and got inspiration from the Original Nobel Prize of Pakistan's only Noble Laureate Professor Dr Abdus Salam, housed in the Library of the 146-year-old educational institution.
A delegation of 32 position-holders of the three provinces has arrived in Punjab on a one-week tour under the Chief Minister's Programme titled "Inter-Provincial Tour of Talented Students." The Nobel Prize remained the centre of attraction among the position-holders and they were briefed in detail about the life and achievements of the great scientist.
GCU Chief Librarian, Abdul Waheed told the Director of Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) Italy, Professor Dr Katepalli R Sreenivasan, had gifted the original certificate to GCU because Professor Salam had studied at the Government College from 1942 to 1946 and taught here from 1951 to 1954. Abdul Waheed said that despite being a scientist, Professor Salam has great interest in literature and the same is evident from the fact that he was also editor 'The Ravi', an annual literary magazine of GCU.
Dr Salam had received the Nobel Prize Certificate from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden on December 10, 1979. The certificate reads "For their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter-alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current."
Talking to the media and GCU teachers, the students pledged they would also follow in the footsteps of the great scientist, Professor Abdus Salam. They said that people like Professor Abdus Salam were the real heroes of Pakistan. They believed that Pakistani youth was highly talented and the government should provide scholarships to all position-holders for higher education in the country as well as aboard. A student from Kyber Pakhttunkhwa said that all the big names who had contributed in the development of Pakistan including Qauid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah had once studied aboard.