Asghar Qadir


Asghar Qadir, HI, SI, FPAS is a Pakistani mathematician, physicist and economist. In mathematics he contributed to the fields of differential equations, number theory and special functions. In physics his major contributions are to general relativity, astrophysics, cosmology, quantum field theory, and related fields. In economics he worked on critiquing the usual approach to Islamic economics, and introduced the ideas of dual sector inflation and quantum economics. He was an educationist: as a university teacher and administrator; and planning for the development of his fields of work in Pakistan, and to some extent in other parts of the Third World.

Early life and education

His father, Manzur Qadir s/o Sir Abdul Qadir and mother, Asghari d/o Fazl-i-Hussain, married in 1936 and had a daughter, Shirin, in 1939 and a son, Basharat, in 1944. The son had a congenital disease, anidrotic ectodermal dysplasia, because of which he does not sweat, so his mother had gone to Simla in the summer of 1946, where Asghar was born with the same congenital defect. Their mother opened a nursery school in 1949 at her house, for them to study without exposure to excessive heat. Asghar studied at Cathedral School from 1953 to 1958, and then accompanied his parents to Karachi, where his father had to go as Foreign Minister. The family had to shift to Rawalpindi with the government, and Asghar took the matriculation examination privately, but attending classes at St. Mary's School in 1960. He joined Gordon College, Rawalpindi for the F.Sc., which he obtained in 1962. As his father then became Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court, they shifted to Lahore, where Asghar joined Government College, Lahore to obtain a B.Sc. in 1964, in Mathematics and Physics. He went to the Imperial College of Science and Technology, of the London University, for a B.Sc. in Physics, obtained in 1967 and then a DIC in Theoretical Physics in 1968 from Imperial. He joined Roger Penrose for the PhD in General Relativity at the Mathematics Department of Birkbeck College, London University, which he was awarded on the 1st of February 1971. He married Rabiya d/o Mr. A.A. Mirza in 1972 and had two sons, Ali and Usman in 1973 and 1974, respectively.

Career

Asghar Qadir joined the Mathematics Department of the Islamabad University, later called the Quaid-e-Azam University, in September 1971 as a Research Associate and continued at that University till 2004, with periods of Sabbatical and Extraordinary Leave, becoming Assistant Professor in 1973, Associate Professor in 1982, full Professor in 1987 and Meritorious Professor in 2000. He served as Chairman of the Department for over ten years, and Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences for over a year. He expressed his objections to various actions of the Vice Chancellor at QAU and resigned in protest in 2003. His resignation was converted to early retirement by the Syndicate of the University and accepted in 2004. He then joined the National University of Sciences & Technology, Islamabad and set up the Centre for Advanced Mathematics and Physics. He continued as its Director General till it was enlarged and converted to the School of Natural Sciences in late 2009 and then served as Principal of the School till the middle of 2011. He was then appointed Professor Emeritus for over seven years till January 2019 in the Physics Department. He was then appointed Advisor till June 2019, after which he left NUST.

Association with other institutions

During the summers of 1966 and 1967 Asghar Qadir worked in the Beams Group of the proton synchrotron, NIMROD, at the Rutherford High Energy Laboratory, where he developed a Fortran IV Library subroutine for interpolation. This was needed to increase the efficiency of NIMROD from the low value of 7% to the design efficiency of 25%.
He went on Sabbatical Leave to work with John Archibald Wheeler at the Centre for Theoretical Physics of the University of Texas at Austin on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1978/79 and a Fulbright Hayes Fellowship in 1986/87.
He attended summer courses in Mathematics at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in 1972, 1975 and 1978 and attended the first Marcel Grossmann Meeting in 1972 and a Conference on Mathematical Economics there in 1978, In 1980 he was appointed Associate Member of the ICTP for six years in 1980, extended for another term till 1992, when he was made Senior Associate till 1999. During the terms funds are provided to the members but they retain the title without additional funds for life. He continued to visit the ICTP many times apart from those visits. He was appointed Research Associate at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics in an honorary capacity from 1980 and then appointed Senior Fellow there in 1988. Also in 1980 he was appointed as Associate Director for Physics, Mathematics and Economics at the Centre of Basic Sciences of the University Grants Commission of Pakistan in an honorary capacity which was converted to Director in 1988.
He went for one semester to the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, during the Fall of 1993, as Professor of Mathematics to set up the Mathematics programme there, apart from helping with setting up the scheduling structure and the Faculty of Mathematics and Applied Physics. He then completed his permitted three years of Extraordinary Leave from 1994 to 1997 to go as Professor of Mathematics of the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. When the rules of his University were changed to allow a total of five years, he went to KFUPM for two more years of leave from 2000 to 2002. After that he accepted an honorary appointment as Adjunct Professor there, on which he had to go for three to six weeks to KFUPM per year. He resigned from this position in 2015. He had many short visits to the Department of Physics of the La Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, starting in 1978. He also had many summer vacation visits to the Physics Department of the Salento University of Lecce, Italy, starting from 1995, and developed a collaboration between it and NUST. He visited the Centre of the Department of Computation and Applied Mathematics, Centre for Differential Equations, Continuum Mechanics and Applications of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg first in 1999 and then very frequently, and was given an honorary appointment as Visiting Professor at the Department. He developed a collaboration between DECMA and NUST as well.
After leaving NUST he took appointments as Visiting Professor for a semester or two at the Physics Department of GIKI, at the Abdus Salam School of Mathematics of the Government College University, Lahore, the Physics Department of the COMSATS University Islamabad, Islamabad, and the Mathematics Department of QAU.

Academic career

Asghar's life can be assimilated to the title of a poem by Robert Frost, namely 'The Road not Taken'. Asghar did not do any post doctoral work. Instead, he went for courses in Mathematics and Physics to ICTP in 1972 and 1975. He found those to be gainful in becoming a Scientist. He also attended the First Marcel Grossmann Meeting at ICTP. Ever since then he has been a contributor to these meetings. The last Marcel Grossmann Meeting was held Online in 2021.
Riazuddin introduced Qadir to Salam where Salam encourages Qadir to research in mathematical physics in more depth. Under Riazuddin and Salam, Qadir specialized in the theory of Special relativity, mathematics of particle physics, and mathematical economics including quantum economics.
In 1976, Qadir joined Quaid-e-Azam University's Department of Mathematics as an associate professor. In 1983, Qadir became chairman of the Department of Mathematics at the Quaid-i-Azam University. In 1986, Riazuddin invited Qadir to Trieste, Italy to join International Centre for Theoretical Physics where he carried out his research in special and general theory of relativity. At ICTP, he taught the advanced course of differential equations, Special functions, Upper and lower bounds on Entropy and the Number Theory. In 1988, after researching at ICTP under Abdus Salam, Qadir re-joined Qau and became full professor of Mathematics.
In 1989, Qadir published a book on Special relativity through World Scientific. Qadir provided simple representation of details of calculations and its extension into theory of motion. Through his text book, Qadir briefly discussed and introduced the Special Relativity for extension into General Relativity.
In 1993, he was asked by the President, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, to teach in the then newly founded research institute at Topi, Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology. In 1994, he went to Saudi Arabia where he visited his lifelong friend Riazuddin where, on his friend's recommendation, joined King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals where he served as a chairman of Department of Mathematics and Statistics.
In 1998, Qadir came back to Pakistan and re-joined Quaid-e-Azam University as an associate professor of mathematics. As part of his contributions, the Government of Pakistan conferred Qadir with civilian award, Sitara-e-Imtiaz, and earned the national fame. In 1999, Qadir became the Dean of Faculty of Natural Sciences which he continued till 2000. He served as the Founder Director General of the Centre for Advanced Mathematics and Physics, National University of Sciences and Technology from 2004 to 2011. He retired from NUST in 2019, and is currently affiliated with Abdus Salam School of Mathematics Sciences, GCU Lahore.

Awards and honours

Fellowships and memberships

Publications

His recent newspaper articles include:Two Beacons of light Why the compulsory study of Islamiyat and Pakistan Studies is dividing us Don't take too much notice of university rankings, they're flawed Did Malala deserve the Nobel Peace Prize? Remembering Uncle Khushwant
His academic books include:Topology for Beginners Einstein's General Theory of Relativity Relativity: An Introduction to the Special Theory
His other publications include
  • Popular Science: Fictional and Non-Fictional DimensionsRiazuddin: In Memoriam
  • International Symposium on Experimental Gravitation by Munawar Karim and Asghar Qadir
  • 5th International Summer College on Physics and Contemporary Needs
  • 12th Regional Conference On Mathematical Physics by Aslam, M Jamil, Hussain, Faheem, Qadir, Asghar
  • Gravitational Wave Sources May Be "Further" Than We Think by Asghar Qadir
  • On Quantum Effects Near a Black Hole Singularity by Asghar Qadir, Asghar, Azad A. Siddiqui
  • Mathematical physics: proceedings of the 12th Regional Conference by Riazuddin, Asghar Qadir, Faheem Hussain, Hamid Saleem, M. Jamil Aslam.