Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy, recent winner of the UNESCO Kalinga Prize, is a researcher and scholar with deep convictions that extend beyond science to social and political issues.

Science and Society

Pakistani-born physicist Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy, who was awarded UNESCO's prestigious Kalinga Prize for the popularisation of science in 2003, is one of a rare breed of scientists, equally at home in both the world of science and the world of social and political affairs.
Hoodbhoy, professor of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, was born in Karachi in 1950. He received his bachelor's, master's and PhD degrees all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, studying electrical engineering, mathematics, solid state physics and nuclear physics along the way. Not wanting to be another statistic in the brain-drain phenomenon, he returned to Pakistan in the early 1970s and has been a faculty member at Quaid-e-Azam University ever since. His main research interests are quantum mechanics, quantum chromodynamics and supersymmetry.
An ICTP Associate from 1986 to 1992, Hoodbhoy has visited Trieste on many occasions. In November 1997, he lectured at the Abdus Salam Memorial Meeting, organised one year after the death of the Centre's founder. Hoodbhoy used the occasion to speak "not about Salam's unparalleled success but, instead, his most spectacular failure: Salam's unfulfilled quest to bring science to Pakistan and other Muslim countries."
"It's a sad paradox," Hoodbhoy recalled then," that such a profoundly religious individual as Salam, who was member of the Muslim Ahmadiya minority, ultimately became a non-Muslim in a state where non-Muslims are by law second-class citizens."
Even worse, "Salam was the target of bitter attacks and vilification. Magazines concocted wild conspiracies of nuclear espionage, claiming that Salam had sold nuclear secrets to India. Fundamentalist student groups made it virtually impossible for Salam to visit any university campus. I am ashamed to say that Salam could never set foot in my university in Islamabad, whose physics department had been inspired in considerable part by him, and which was the only department in the country where his lectures could be understood."
The result, Hoodbhoy bitterly comments today, is that "Salam's name remains unknown to school children in Pakistan."
Apart from his scientific work, Hoodbhoy chairs Mashal Books, a non-profit organisation that publishes monographs in Urdu on women's rights, education and the environment. He has written and spoken extensively on topics ranging from science in Islam to education in Pakistan. More recently, Hoodbhoy has produced three documentary series in Urdu, broadcast weekly by Pakistani television, focusing on education, the power of scientific thinking and the mysteries in the universe.
Hoodbhoy is deeply critical of Pakistan's educational system. "It is based upon rote learning," he notes, "and it actively seeks to destroy the inquisitiveness of early childhood by rewarding obedience and punishing originality. Fortunately it is not 100 percent efficient. Thousands of viewers of the Urdu science television serials that I produced wrote letters seeking answers to questions ranging from black holes and supernovae to the ozone hole and human cloning."
"Science in Islam," continues Hoodbhoy, "has been stuck solidly in the mud for seven centuries, and is likely to remain there until Muslim societies open themselves to the realisation that with science comes the scientific method which, at its core, requires free thought and open enquiry. Without such a change in philosophical attitudes, no amount of resources poured into scientific development is likely to do much good."
Many of Hoodbhoy's articles and essays have been devoted to the problem of nuclear proliferation set against the backdrop of Pakistan-India border tensions. Nuclear disarmament remains a passion for him, and he is a member of the Pugwash Council.
During the past few months, relationships between the two countries have dramatically improved. Hoodbhoy hopes that "the recent thaw in Pakistan-India relations could lead to academic exchanges between the two countries. Pakistan could gain enormously from employing Indian professors and researchers on short-term contracts, as well as sending its students to Indian universities for graduate work in the sciences and arts. Indian faculty members, on the other hand, could enjoy higher salaries than at home. It would be a win-win situation."

Back to Contents

Home