The Sixth BCSPIN Summer School on "Current Trends in High Energy Physics and Cosmology" held in Kathmandu in early June owes its origins to the inspiration of the late Professor Abdus Salam, Nobel Laureate in Physics. Abdus Salam´s legacy was not just his outstanding contributions to particle physics but also the ceaseless championing of the cause of young and talented scientists of the developing world. A few years back, some of these young people gathered at the institute established by Abdus Salam, the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, and decided to start a Summer School in Physics to help train and expose young physicists from the Asian region. This school has held classes in Kathmandu every two years since 1989, with lectures by many renowned physicists, including a few Nobel Laureates. The acronym of the summer school, BCSPIN, refers to the six countries from where young physicists are drawn for training: Bangladesh, China, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India and Nepal.
The burning passion of Abdus Salam´s life was using science and technology to alleviate poverty. As he said at a science conference in Dhaka in 1961: "It is a new concept that not merely sections of the society, but entire societies can be lifted out of the quagmire of poverty and that entire peoples can now crash through the poverty barrier."
Abdus Salam carried his message to kings, presidents and prime ministers. When he visited Nepal in 1989 to inaugurate the First BCSPIN Summer School, during a meeting with King Birendra he forcefully pleaded for one percent of Nepal´s GDP to be spent on the development of science and technology for the benefit of the people.
If Mr Salam did not achieve as much success as he might have in this personal crusade, it is because he was ahead of his time. But Mr Salam had greater success in his other mission in life: the unification theory to better understand the divine design in Nature.