Pervez Hoodbhoy, 2014
Karachi, Sindh Province, West Pakistan
|Residence||Islamabad, Islamabad Capital Territory|
National Center for Physics
FC College University
|Alma mater||Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)|
|Known for||Parton distribution functions, Field Theory, Phenomenology, supersymmetry and Abstract algebra|
|Influences||Abdus Salam, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell|
|Notable awards||UNESCO Kalinga Prize (2003)
Fulbright Award (1998)
Faiz Ahmed Faiz Award (1990)
Abdus Salam Award (1984)
IEEE Baker Award (1968)
Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy (Urdu: پرویز ہودبھائی; Gujarati: પરવેઝ હૂદ્ભોય born 11 July 1950), is a Pakistani nuclear physicist, essayist, national security analyst and the professor of physics at the Forman Christian College University in Lahore. Since 1976, he has taught physics and associated with the physics department at the Quaid-e-Azam University; he also did research on topics in theoretical applications in the topological insulators, various Hall effects and Graphene at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).
After graduating and receiving PhD from MIT while continues to do research on particles, he is a recipient of IEEE Baker Award (1968), and the Abdus Salam Prize for Mathematics (1984) He has authored various scientific research papers in peer-reviewed journals.
Prior to his science career, Hoodbhoy is a prominent environmentalist, social activist who helped popularize science in the country and regularly writes on a wide range of social, political, cultural and environmental issues. He is the chairman of Mashal (lit. torch)— an NGO which publishes Urdu books on feminism, education, environmental issues, philosophy, and modern thought. Supporting the arms disarmament internationally, he is known for his strong criticism on nuclear weapons and profoundly argued against its development by the nuclear countries.
Born and raised in Karachi, Sindh, Hoodbhoy passed the competitive O-Level and A-Level exams after attending the famed Karachi Grammar School. After earning a scholarship, Hoodbhoy went to the United States to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). While attending the MIT in Massachusetts, Hoodbhoy worked for a local Pakistani restaurant based in Massachusetts to support his studies and showed a great interest in electronics and mathematics. At MIT, Hoodbhoy graduated with double BSc in electrical engineering and mathematics in 1971, followed by MS in physics with a concentration in solid-state physics in 1973. After graduation, Hoodbhoy joined the Quaid-e-Azam University (Qau) as a researcher and renewed his scholarship to resume his studies in the United States.
Hoodbhoy continued his research in doctoral studies in physics at the MIT, and awarded PhD in Nuclear physics in 1978. In the United States, his collaboration took place with the scientists who participated in well known Manhattan Project in 1940s, who subsequently influenced in his philosophy. Hoodbhoy remained a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Washington, for a short time. In 1973, Hoodbhoy joined the Institute of Physics of the University of Engineering and Technology in Lahore.
He spent his research career extensively on Quantum field theory, particle phenomenology, and supersymmetry in the area of Particle physics. After receiving PhD from MIT, Hoodbhoy met with Riazuddin and Abdus Salam– the prominent Pakistani physicists who were visiting the MIT to gave lectures on particle physics. Subsequently, he joined the group of Pakistani physicists at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. At ICTP, Hoodbhoy collaborated with Pakistan's leading theoretical physicists who worked under Abdus Salam in 1970s.
After ICTP work, Hoodbhoy returned to Pakistan to join Quaid-e-Azam University (Qau) where he began teaching and lecturing on physics. Eventually, he became chairman of Institute of Theoretical Physics (now department of physics). After spending more than 30 years at Qau, Hoodbhoy moved to Lahore where he joined the Lahore University of Management Sciences as a visiting professor, while remains a visiting scientist at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Controversy over his contract in LUMS boiled up and sparked an academic debate when it was reported in the news media that Hoodbhoy's email to Vice-Chancellor of LUMS was made public. Eventually, Hoodbhoy moved to Forman Christian College University permanently and joined the senior staff to instructed courses on physics.
Prior to his returned to Pakistan in 1976, the secretive development on nuclear deterrence program was near completion and knew well of the program's hidden nature. Hoodbhoy maintains his close ties with Pakistan's vibrant nuclear society, and had collaborated with many of country's leading theoretical physicists throughout his career, mainly with Ishfaq Ahmad. On multiple occasions, Hoodbhoy staunchly countered Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan's "father-of" claims, and roundly criticized his academic research on nuclear physics. In 1980s, he famously debated with Bashiruddin Mahmood on the topics of sunspots, life-after-death, and philosophy.
In 1999, Hoodbhoy with Ishfaq Ahmad and Riazuddin, played a major and influential role in the establishment of National Center for Physics (NCP), becaming one of the earliest academic scientists who joined the NCP at its inception.
Hoodbhoy has roundly criticized the development on nuclear weapons, especially its extension to South Asia, mainly by India and Pakistan. In 2011, Hoodbhoy held India responsible for Pakistan's symmetric nuclear weapons programme as part of Pakistan's self-credible deterrence. According to Hoodbhoy, India's nuclear tests forced Pakistan to jump into the nuclear arena in 1974, and again in 1998, after war-threatening statements were made by Indian government to Pakistan; Pakistan equalised this magnitude over the nuclear edge that same month. While believing that Pakistan's nuclear deterrence has protected the country from any foreign aggression and preventing from numerous war threatening situations with India, Hoodbhoy on the other hand has raised concerns about the security of nuclear arsenals on the possibility of radicals gaining control.
Views on politics and national security
Apart from his specialist field of research, Hoodbhoy extensively writes and speaks on topics ranging from science in Islam to education and arms disarmament issues around the world. He is author of Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, that has been translated into five languages. In this book, Hoodbhoy outlines the history of Pakistan, implications of theocracy and martial law in Pakistan, and the textbook revival in education system of Pakistan. His articles on various issues related to science and social issues are often published in international media. His publications are repeatedly published in both technical and non-technical papers.
Hoodbhoy widely writes about the role and modernisation of Pakistan military, particularly the defence budget spending by the Pakistan government on the military. In the past, he has been critical on the political role of the military but recently he has given a bitter and a heavy criticism on Saudi Arabian sponsored Wahhabi Islam and Israel's Zionism ideologies.
In an interview on secularism, he mentioned that obsession with scientific-religious Apophenia may have caused lack of scientific advancement among Muslims in recent years. In 2003 he was one the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.
Hoodbhoy has made important contributions in physics, particularly in particle physics. Many of Hoodbhoy's recorded lectures on physics are available online. At National Center for Physics, Hoodbhoy conducted research on different aspects of particle physics, and pioneered studies in modern physics and its extension to mathematical and nuclear physics. In 2006, Hoodbhoy published a brief mathematical description of Generalized Parton Distributions. In 2007, Hoodbhoy re-published the work of Jens Lyng Peterson the Maldacena conjecture (a conjectured equivalence between a string theory and gravity defined on one space, and a quantum field theory without gravity defined by one or less dimension) where he contributed mathematically to the theory. In the same year, he re-published the work of Edward Witten on Anti-de Sitter space and its extension to the field of Holography. While the paper was published experimentally in 1998 by Witten, Hoodbhoy provided the brief mathematical proofs and description to understand, logically, the subject of Sitter space— a scalar curvature in general theory of relativity.
He produced a 13-part documentary series in Urdu for Pakistan Television on critical issues in education, and two series aimed at popularising science. In 2004, he made a documentary film 'Crossing the Lines: Kashmir, Pakistan, India' along with Dr. Zia Mian. These documentaries carry heavy emphasis on the issues of education, public health and scientific revolution in Pakistan.
In his documentaries, Dr. Hoodbhoy has heavily criticised Pakistan and India's nuclear weapons program. He also pointed out the seriousness of the Talibanization in Pakistan and its immediate effects on South Asia. His documentaries also point out that American and NATO forces in Afghanistan didn't help the Afghan people's life and there was no reform in Afghanistan's social and public sector and, instead, the insurgency and corruption grew, which also destabilised Pakistan's western front.
- The Bell Tolls for Planet Earth (2003)
- Pakistan and India Under the Nuclear Shadow (2001)
Criticism on HEC
It was reported in 2009, Hoodbhoy was in a conflict with Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, an organic chemist, over the issue of Higher Education Commission (HEC). In 2009, the American magazine, the Nature, published an article on the achievements and showered much praise on the activities of the HEC. The debate on HEC further expanded and his colleagues such as Adil Najam, Abdul Qadeer Khan, and Atta-ur-Rehman did produce counter-arguments against Hoodbhoy. He has been a harsh critic on the performance of HEC since 2003 when it was led by Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, and boiled up much-heated debates on Pakistan's news media.
Administrative competency of HEC was called into question by Hoodbhoy who describe the HEC's achievement "dismal". Hoodbhoy supported his arguments against HEC's productivity, that in the case of UESTP-France convention in Karachi, out of an expected faculty strength of between 450 to 600, no French faculty or administrative staff actually arrived. At the television debate, Hoodbhoy questioned the statistics used to support the positive appraisal of HEC's activities in a series of communications between Hoodbhoy and HEC chairman Atta-Ur-Rehman. It was claimed by the latter that in mathematics, Pakistani authors received 20% more citations than the worldwide average. Hoodbhoy questioned this on several grounds including the number of self-citations these publications received and said that this was a crucial aspect that the HEC left out of its interpretation. Criticism was leveled by Hoodbhoy at the practice of hiring those foreign academics in local universities who were said to have difficulty in communicating and teaching, although they contributed to boosting the number of research publications originating from Pakistani universities.
Awards and honours
- An Executive member of the board of Riazuddin National Center for Physics.
- Member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
- Awarded UNESCO's Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science in Pakistan.
- His TV serials and film The Bell Tolls for Planet Earth won honourable mention at the Paris Film Festival.
- A member of the Editorial Board of Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies.
He is also the recipient of:
- Baker Award for Electronics (1968).
- Student-of-the-Year, Pakistan Students Association of America (1972).
- Rockefeller Mauze Fellowship for graduate studies (1973).
- Abdus Salam Award for Mathematics (1984).
- Associate of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (1986–1994).
- Faiz Ahmed Faiz Award, for contributions towards the cause of education in Pakistan (1990).
- "Book of the Year Award", awarded by the National Book Council of Pakistan (1993).
- Fulbright Award (1997–1998) for research at the University of Maryland, College Park.
- Selma V. Forkosch Prize (2003)
- International Advisory Council of the Brookings Doha Center.
- Civic Courage Award- 2007.
- 2010 Joseph A. Burton Award (2010)
- Education and the State: Fifty Years Of Pakistan Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 978-0-19-577825-0
- Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality Zed Books, London, 1992. ISBN 978-1-85649-025-2 (Translations in Arabic, Indonesian, Malaysian, Turkish, Japanese, and Urdu)
- (Co-Edited with A. Ali), Proceedings of the School on Fundamental Physics and Cosmology World Scientific, Singapore, 1991.
- (With A. H. Nayyar), "Rewriting the History of Pakistan", in Islam, Politics and the State: The Pakistan Experience, Ed. Mohammad Asghar Khan, Zed Books, London, 1986. ISBN 978-0-86232-471-1
- Two-Photon Effects in Lepton-AntiLepton Pair Photoproduction from a Nucleon Target using Real Photons, Authors: Pervez Hoodbhoy, Phys.Rev. D73 (2006) 054027
- Probing Quark Distribution Amplitudes Through Generalized Parton Distributions at Large Momentum Transfer, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Xiangdong Ji, Feng Yuan, Phys.Rev.Lett. 92 (2004) 012003
- Explicit Proof that Electroproduction of Transversely Polarized Vector Mesons Vanishes in Perturbative QCD, Pervez Hoodbhoy (University of Maryland and Quaid-e-Azam University), Phys.Rev. D65 (2002) 077501
- Does the Gluon Spin Contribute in A Gauge Invariant Way to Nucleon Spin? Pervez Hoodbhoy, Xiangdong Ji, Phys.Rev. D60 (1999) 114042
- Nucleon-Quarkonium Elastic Scattering and the Gluon Contribution to Nucleon Spin, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Phys.Rev.Lett. 82 (1999) 4985–4987
- Implications of Color Gauge Symmetry For Nucleon Spin Structure, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Xiangdong Ji, Wei Lu, Phys.Rev. D59 (1999) 074010
- Quark Orbital-Angular-Momentum Distribution in the Nucleon, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Xiangdong Ji, Wei Lu, Phys.Rev. D59 (1999) 014013
- The Spin Structure of the Nucleon in the Asymptotic Limit, Ji, J. Tang (MIT), P. Hoodbhoy (Quaid-e-Azam, Pakistan), Phys.Rev.Lett. 76 (1996) 740–743
- Helicity-Flip Off-Forward Parton Distributions of the Nucleon, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Xiangdong Ji, Phys.Rev. D58 (1998) 054006
- Wavefunction corrections and off-forward gluon distributions in diffractive J/psi electroproduction, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Phys.Rev. D56 (1997) 388–393
- Relativistic and Binding Energy Corrections to Direct Photon Production In Upsilon Decay, Mohammad Ali Yusuf, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Phys.Rev. D54 (1996) 3345–3349
- Beyond The Colour-Singlet Model For Inelastic J_psi Photoproduction, H. Khan, P. Hoodbhoy, Phys. Lett. B382 (1996) 189
- The Spin Structure of the Nucleon in the Asymptotic Limit, X. Ji, J. Tang (MIT), P. Hoodbhoy (Quaid-e-Azam, Pakistan), Phys.Rev.Lett. 76 (1996) 740–743
- Novel approach to decays, gluon distributions, and fragmentation functions of heavy quarkonia, Rafia Ali, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Phys.Rev. D51 (1995) 2302–2310
- Quark fragmentation functions in a diquark model for proton and $\Lambda$ hyperon production, Muhammad Nzar, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Phys.Rev. D51 (1995) 32–36
- Systematic gauge invariant approach to heavy quarkonium decays, Hafsa Khan, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Phys.Rev. D53 (1996) 2534–2540
- Twist-Four Distributions in a Transversely-Polarized Nucleon and the Drell-Yan Process, Pevrez Hoodbhoy, Xiangdong Xi, Phys.Rev. D50 (1994) 4429–4435
- Detecting Two-Photon Exchange Effects in Hard Scattering from Nucleon Targets, in Mathematical Physics: Proceedings of the 12th Regional Conference, Islamabad, Pakistan 27 March – 1 April 2006, World Scientific, Singapore, 2007. ISBN 978-981-270-591-4
- Abdus Salam: Past and Present- The News (29 January 1996)
- Generalized Parton Distributions, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad
- Najam, Adil (9 September 2009). "Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy Responds to Nature Article on Pakistan’s Higher Education Reform". Pakistaniaat. Pakistaniaat. Retrieved 13 February 2015.
- Hassan, Shazia (12 December 2012). "HEC lost track by focusing on quantity rather than quality’". Dawn newspapers, 2012. Dawn newspapers, 2012. Retrieved 13 February 2015.
- "HEC's performance by Atta ur Rehman". Retrieved 14 February 2015.
- Hoodbhoy. "The HEC Controvery- Separating Fact and Fiction". https://vimeo.com/. Retrieved 14 February 2015.
- (German) Kaznain, Hazim. "Pakistanischer Atomphysiker: "Muslimische Gesellschaften sind kollektiv gescheitert" (Archive). Der Spiegel. Monday 28 January 2013. Interview with Hoodbhoy.
- A complete repository of Pervez Hoodbhoy's articles in the making
- Profile, QAU
- Pervez Hoodbhoy's recent articles for Z Magazine
- Pervez Hoodbhoy's articles for the website Chowk.com
- Pervez Hoodbhoy's research papers
- Science and the Islamic world—The quest for rapprochement, Pervez Hoodbhoy, American Institute of Physics, August 2007
- Video Presentation: "Sacred Terror: Theirs and Ours." Professor Hoodbhoy speaking at the University of Illinois, October 2007.
- Pakistan's westward drift – article by P Hoodbhoy lamenting the rising tide of militant Islam in Pakistan