 Yash Pal was born in 1926 in Jhang, Punjab Province, British India, now in Pakistan.The town Jhang was also the place of birth of Yash Pal's contemporary, Abdus Salam, the renowned theoretical physicist and the only Pakistani Physics Nobel laureate.He had a peaceful life in the town of Quetta with his parents until the disastrous 1935 Quetta earthquake (the deadliest earthquake in South Asia until 2005 with over 60,000 casualties) when young Yash Pal and his siblings (a brother and a sister) were rescued from beneath the remains of the buildings that were razed down to ground.