SALAM: We in the developing countries have been sold by well meaning, and perhaps not so well meaning people the idea that all we need is technology –
borrowed ideas. Lord Blackett, my mentor at Imperial College,
used to say, ‘There is a world supermarket of technology, go and buy it and take it home.’
[not exact transcript]
That is just absurd. Technology simply does not take that way. You need to have in every country a core of people with discrimination at the least, and that discriminating core of people is what we are hoping to provide at Trieste. 41s
Luciano Bertocchi (indicative only): It was here in Italy that Salam fulfilled his special dream. He remembered his own sense of isolation in Lahore,
and what he called the cruel choice between homeland and profession. He wanted to create a meeting ground where a physicist from any country could mix with the world’s brightest scientists and then return home to inspire others.
24s
NARRATION (“Salam”): I owed my own progress to a series of accidents. Even the young
(Narration cont.)
Albert Einstein might have been lost to physics, but for a series of accidents. Such was the measure of the financial … and other frustrations which he faced, even in a country like Switzerland.
Unfortunately the same thing applies to an even greater extent where the developing countries are concerned. 24s
Luciano Bertocchi (indicative only): We talked about the possibilities here at Miramare Castle near Trieste, in 1960. That was when I first met Abdus Salam – a man with a striking dark
moustache, only in his mid-thirties, but already a well-known figure among the world’s physicists. Salam skilfully used his growing reputation to persuade his colleagues to support his dream of a major centre for physicists from the developing world. 26s
NARRATION (“Salam”): We had no friends whatsoever among the great countries. But the idea caught the imagination of the developing countries – then nothing could stop it.
At the International Atomic Energy Agency meetings in Vienna, it was decided that governments should make offers of sites. A bad way of proceeding. There was no rational discussion of the ideal place. The Italian offer, linked to Trieste, was the handsomest. 26s
(Music)
André-Marie Hamende (indicative only):
Abdus Salam liked to stretch his legs along the waterfront, here in Trieste.
He saw the advantages of an old city that is itself a melting pot
for Italians, Austrians and Slavs. Hemmed in against the sea by Communist Yugoslavia,
Trieste was right beside the Iron Curtain that separated East and West during the Cold War.
Here experts and beginners from East, West, North and South could disregard politics and argue about science.
(FX car)
Money was very tight, and Salam and his Italian hosts had to improvise.
(FX car)
The International Centre for Theoretical Physics opened in 1964 in Piazza Oberdan in
a government office block. It was not a comfortable billet. 44s
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