List of notable or famous scientists from Pakistan, with bios and photos, including the top scientists born in Pakistan and even some popular scientists who immigrated to Pakistan. If you're trying to find out the names of famous Pakistani scientists then this list is the perfect resource for you. These scientists are among the most prominent in their field, and information about each well-known scientist from Pakistan is included when available.
The list you're viewing is made up of a variety of different people, including Aafia Siddiqui and Abdus Salam. Featuring nuclear scientists and more, this list has it all.
This historic scientists from Pakistan list can help answer the questions "Who are some Pakistani scientists of note?" and "Who are the most famous scientists from Pakistan?" These prominent scientists of Pakistan may or may not be currently alive, but what they all have in common is that they're all respected Pakistani scientists.
Use this list of renowned Pakistani scientists to discover some new scientists that you aren't familiar with. Don't forget to share this list by clicking one of the social media icons at the top or bottom of the page.
Aafia Siddiqui ( (listen); Urdu: عافیہ صدیقی; born 2 March 1972) is a Pakistani neuroscientist with degrees from MIT and Brandeis University, who was convicted of multiple felonies. In 2010, she was convicted of seven counts of attempted murder and assault of US personnel, and is serving her 86-year sentence at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas.Siddiqui was born in Pakistan to a Deobandi Muslim family. In 1990, she went to study in the United States and obtained a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brandeis University in 2001. She returned to Pakistan for a time following the 9/11 attacks and again in 2003 during the war in Afghanistan. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad reportedly named her a courier and financier for Al-Qaeda, after his arrest and interrogation, and she was placed on the FBI Seeking Information - Terrorism list; she remains the only woman to have been featured on the list. Around this time she and her three children disappeared in Pakistan.Five years later, she reappeared in Ghazni, Afghanistan, was arrested by Afghan police and held for questioning by the FBI. While in custody, Siddiqui told the FBI she had gone into hiding but later disavowed her testimony and stated she had been abducted and imprisoned. Supporters believe she was held captive at Bagram Air Force Base as a ghost prisoner—charges the US government denies.
While in custody in Ghazni, police found documents and notes for making bombs along with containers of sodium cyanide in her possession. During the second day in custody, she shot at visiting U.S. FBI and Army personnel with an M4 carbine one of the interrogators had placed on the floor by his feet. She was shot in the torso when the warrant officer returned fire with a 9-millimeter pistol. She was hospitalized, and treated; then extradited and flown to the US where in September 2008 she was indicted on charges of assault and attempted murder of a US soldier in the police station in Ghazni—charges she denied. She was convicted on 3 February 2010 and later sentenced to 86 years in prison.
Her case has been called a "flashpoint of Pakistani-American tensions", and "one of the most mysterious in a secret war dense with mysteries". In Pakistan her arrest and conviction was seen by the public as an "attack on Islam and Muslims", and occasioned large protests throughout the country; while in the US, she was considered by some to be especially dangerous as "one of the few alleged Al Qaeda associates with the ability to move about the United States undetected, and the scientific expertise to carry out a sophisticated attack". She has been termed "Lady al-Qaeda" by a number of media organizations due to her alleged affiliation with Islamists. Pakistani news media called the trial a "farce", while other Pakistanis labeled this reaction "knee-jerk Pakistani nationalism". The Pakistani Prime Minister at that time, Yousaf Raza Gillani, and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, promised to push for her release.ISIS have offered to trade her for prisoners on two separate occasions: once for James Foley and once for Kayla Mueller.
Aban Marker Kabraji (b: 12 March 1953, Bombay (now Mumbai), India), is a Pakistani biologist and scientist of Parsi origin. She is Regional Director of the Asia Regional Office of IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Previously, she was Country Representative for the IUCN Pakistan office.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, NI, HI, FPAS ( (listen); Urdu: ڈاکٹر عبد القدیر خان; (born April 1, 1936)), known as A. Q. Khan, is a Pakistani columnist, nuclear physicist and a metallurgical engineer, who founded the uranium enrichment program for Pakistan's atomic bomb project. AQ Khan founded and established the Kahuta Research Laboratories (KRL) in 1976, serving as both its senior scientist and Chairman until he retired in 2001. Khan was also a figure in other Pakistani national science projects, making research contributions to molecular morphology, the physics of martensite alloys, condensed matter physics, and materials physics.
In January 2004, the Pakistani government summoned Khan for a debriefing on his active role in nuclear weapons technology proliferation in other countries after the United States provided evidence of it to the Pakistanis. Khan formally admitted his responsibility for these activities a month later. The Pakistani government dismisses allegations that Pakistani authorities sanctioned Khan's activities.After years of official house arrest during and following his debriefing, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on 6 February 2009 declared Abdul Qadeer Khan to be a free citizen of Pakistan, allowing him free movement inside the country. The verdict was rendered by Chief Justice Sardar Muhammad Aslam. In September 2009, concerned because the decision also ended all security restrictions on Khan, the United States warned that Khan still remained a "serious proliferation risk".
Abdullah Sadiq, PhD, SI (born 1940), is a Pakistani physicist and ICTP laureate who received the ICTP Prize in the honour of Nikolay Bogolyubov, in the fields of Mathematics and Solid State Physics in 1987 for his contributions to scientific knowledge in the field of Mathematics and Statistical physics. He is the professor of physics and current Dean of the Department of Physics of the Air University of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF).
Sadiq is also a renowned educationist of Pakistan with a specialisation in nuclear physics, solid-state physics, and computer programming. He has been a distinguished professor of nuclear physics and solid state physics in many universities of Pakistan.
Mohammad Abdus Salam (; Punjabi, Urdu: عبد السلام, pronounced [əbd̪ʊs səlaːm]; 29 January 1926 – 21 November 1996), was a Pakistani theoretical physicist. He shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg for his contribution to the electroweak unification theory. He was the first Pakistani to receive a Nobel Prize in science and the second from an Islamic country to receive any Nobel Prize (after Anwar Sadat of Egypt).Salam was science advisor to the Ministry of Science and Technology in Pakistan from 1960 to 1974, a position from which he was supposed to play a major and influential role in the development of the country's science infrastructure. Salam contributed to developments in theoretical and particle physics. He was the founding director of the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO), and responsible for the establishment of the Theoretical Physics Group (TPG) in the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC). As Science Advisor, Salam played a role in Pakistan's development of the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and may have contributed as well to development of atomic bomb project of Pakistan in 1972; for this, he is viewed as the "scientific father" of this programme. In 1974, Abdus Salam departed from his country, in protest, after the Parliament of Pakistan passed unanimously a parliamentary bill declaring members of the Ahmadiyya movement to which Salam belonged non-Muslims. In 1998, following the country's nuclear tests, the Government of Pakistan issued a commemorative stamp, as a part of "Scientists of Pakistan", to honour the services of Salam.Salam's notable achievements include the Pati–Salam model, magnetic photon, vector meson, Grand Unified Theory, work on supersymmetry and, most importantly, electroweak theory, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Salam made a major contribution in quantum field theory and in the advancement of Mathematics at Imperial College London. With his student, Riazuddin, Salam made important contributions to the modern theory on neutrinos, neutron stars and black holes, as well as the work on modernising the quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. As a teacher and science promoter, Salam is remembered as a founder and scientific father of mathematical and theoretical physics in Pakistan during his term as the chief scientific advisor to the president. Salam heavily contributed to the rise of Pakistani physics to the physics community in the world. Even until shortly before his death, Salam continued to contribute to physics, and to advocate for the development of science in Third-World countries.
