Dr. Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry: The 'real creator' of Pakistan's nuclear program to whom Muhammad Ali Jinnah wrote a letter inviting him to Pakistan.

Dr. Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry was a pioneer of science and physics in Pakistan but also the 'real creator' of Pakistan's nuclear program. Nuclear scientist Dr Samar Mubarakmand said this in Lahore when he was praising Pakistan's nuclear tests in response to India in 1998.

Born on July 1, 1903, in Kahnoor, a village in Rohtak district of east Punjab, Rafi Muhammad Chaudhary went to study at the Muslim University Aligarh, 140 km from Delhi, on the scholarship of Viceroy Rufus Isaacs.

It was here that he came first in MSc Physics and won gold medals for scoring the highest marks in all scientific subjects.

Inspired by these achievements, Nawab Hamidullah Khan of Bhopal sent him to study on a scholarship to Cambridge University in Britain for further studies. Mark Oliphant, a physicist at the Cavendish Laboratory, persuaded Chowdhury to study nuclear physics.

In 1932, Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry received a doctorate in nuclear physics under the supervision of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Ernest Rutherford.

Khalid Mahmood Asim's research is that this was a wonderful period of Cavendish because there was a lot of progress in atomic and nuclear physics during this period.

At that time, scientists like Sir J.J. Thompson, Lord Rutherford, Austin Wilson, Cookroft Walton, and Sir James Chadwick worked in the Cavendish Laboratory. Dr. Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry always took pride in the fact that he was a student of Rutherford in the Golden Age of Cavendish. ‘

At the age of 30, Dr. Rafi Chaudhry returned to British India and started teaching physics at Islamia College in Lahore. From 1935 to 1938, he was the chairman of the Physics Department.

In 1938, he went to Aligarh Muslim University as the head of the physics department. At the same time, he was married to Noor Jahan Chaudhary, with whom he had three daughters and seven sons.

At Oliphant's invitation, he went back to the UK to work as a Nofield Fellow in the Physics Department of the University of Birmingham.

In the spring of 1947, Dr. Chaudhry returned to Kahnoor after spending a year in Ollie Fant's laboratory in Birmingham.

Due to the increasing violence in the wake of partition, Muslims started migrating to the newly formed Pakistan. Dr Chaudhary decided to shift his family to Aligarh (225 km from Rohtak) by road, while his in-laws chose to travel to Pakistan by train from Rohtak. ‘

"Soon after the creation of Pakistan, Oliphant in a special letter to The Founder of Pakistan Muhammad Ali Jinnah stressed the need to promote the teaching and research of science, especially nuclear and nuclear physics, in the nascent country. ‘

"There is no better Muslim scientist than Dr Rafi Chowdhury in the entire subcontinent for the successful implementation of this programme and urged him to call him to Pakistan immediately," he wrote. ‘

Founder of Pakistan Muhammad Ali Jinnah wrote a letter to Dr. Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry inviting him to come to Pakistan in view of The Elephant's arguments. At the same time, he issued an order to the Ministry of Education, under which Professor Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry was offered to head the Physics Department at Government College Lahore.

When Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru came to know about this, he offered Professor Rafi Chaudhary a deputy directorship in the National Physics Laboratory, but he refused the offer.

On the invitation of the Government of Pakistan, Dr. Rafi Chaudhry along with his family moved to his in-laws' house in a village near Arifwala area of Pakistani Punjab in the summer of 1948. Then he came to Lahore and joined Government College Lahore and resigned from Aligarh University.

Dr. Munawar Chaudhary, son of Dr. Rafi Chaudhary, is associated with his father's alma mater Cavendish Laboratory.

In an e-mail conversation, Dr Munawar Chaudhry told me that his father had come to the conclusion that the future of Muslims in the new country of Pakistan was safer after the partition of India.

So in 1948, he left the professorship and head of the Physics Department of Muslim Aligarh University, where he was in a stable position and accepted the invitation of the Government of Pakistan to professorise and head the Physics Department of Government College Lahore. ‘

His father is mentioned in an article published in Darwin on Dr Munawar Chaudhry: "Dr Rafi Chaudhry was then allotted a large government house in a particular residential area on Golf Road in Lahore. Senior government officials and ministers lived in the area. ‘

According to Munawar Chaudhry, he was a caring father and wanted all his children to get the best education in Lahore.

However, he was so busy with his teaching and research that he did not get time to train any of the children. Despite this, he kept a close eye on the academic performance of each child. ‘

"Besides me, seven of my siblings did their MSc in Physics. One brother did MSc in Chemistry and one brother Azhar Chaudhary joined the Army on short service commission after FSC and did BSc there. Two brothers have died. ‘

Usman Chaudhary, grandson of Dr Rafi Chaudhary and son of Azhar Chaudhary, is making a film on his grandfather's life and his achievements.

The teaser of the film titled 'Rafi: The Untold Story' is available on YouTube. Actors Affan Waheed, Sonia Hussain and other actors are seen in this teaser in English, Urdu and Randari languages, reflecting the same struggle of choice of country faced by Dr. Rafi Chaudhary, which he would have gone through then.

During a conversation with me, the 41-year-old grandson of US-based Dr Rafi Chaudhry, a software engineer, said that he wanted to accurately reflect Islam and Muslims.

"The aim is to show that science and Islam are not contradictory. The two walk together. ‘

"I was very young when my grandfather passed away. The data was collected by talking to family, relatives, colleagues and students. ‘

He is currently fundraising to make this film based on fiction and biography and he wants the film to be released next year.

Feroz Hasan Khan writes in his book 'Eating Grass: The Making of Pakistani Bombs' that at the time of partition, like other elements of national power, the scientific capital of the subcontinent was not evenly distributed.

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research used to oversee several laboratories across India. However, the council and laboratories all remained on the Indian side after the dividing line. ‘

"The first decade of Pakistan's nuclear efforts is the story of three Cambridge-educated physicists Nazir Ahmed, Dr Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry and Dr Abdus Salam. If Rafi Chowdhury was primarily an educationist, Dr Abdus Salam was a scientist and the third member was an administrator. They had to create institutions and identify and train the next generation of Pakistani scientists. ‘

In 1954, Dr. Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry founded a high-tension laboratory in the Physics Department of Government College Lahore for nuclear research. ‘

He received the title of 'Teacher of Teachers' in the scientific community. When one of his students, Munir Ahmed Khan, later introduced him to President Zia-ul-Haq in 1986, the military dictator raised his hand and saluted Rafi Chaudhry for playing a significant role in Pakistan's nuclear development. ‘

According to Haroon Shoaib, Dr. N.M. Butt, a student of Dr. Chaudhary, recalls how he usually lectured continuously for at least two hours and worked 12 hours a day.

He says, "Dr. Rafi Chaudhary would come out of the laboratory late in the evening and go home in a crowd of students and at that time his happiness was as if he was starting a new day. ‘

"He was very sympathetic to the students and also helped the students in need financially. But they do not accept even the slightest service of the students. He walked regularly for six miles every day and his daily diet included a little boiled vegetables and frequent tea throughout the day. ‘

In his lecture organized by the Khwarazmi Society and The Interact Club on Monday, November 30, 1998, Dr. Samar Mubarakmand described Dr. Chaudhry as the 'real creator' of Pakistan's nuclear program.

"An atom accelerator was installed in high-tension laboratories and real high-level research was possible. Many of the students trained in this laboratory hold high positions in Pakistan and abroad.

He created a team of physicists who are now leading Pakistan's nuclear program.

"One of his early students was Dr Tahir Hussain, who is my teacher, and the other was the current chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (Dr Ashfaq Ahmed). ‘

When Dr Mubarakmand was asked to confirm this, Dr Munawar Chaudhary said: "Dr Samar Mubarakmand is absolutely right. After the creation of Pakistan in 1947, most Of the Hindu teachers went to India and there was an acute shortage of physics teachers and scientists in Pakistan. He accepted the challenge to improve the situation. ‘

"He proposed to the Government of Pakistan to build a new laboratory where nuclear and nuclear physics would be researched at the forefront of knowledge," he says. The government accepted his proposal and the new laboratory, which he called the 'High Tension and Nuclear Research Laboratory'. (High tension means high voltage, which is required to accelerate charged particles). ‘

"About 20 to 30 MSc physics students came to the laboratory to do research work in nuclear physics. All students were assigned projects that they supervised. These newly qualified scientists took positions at universities and the newly formed Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology near Rawalpindi. Most of these scientists helped develop Pakistan's nuclear program. ‘

Dr Munawar Chaudhary says his father loved education. Mostly he lectured in postgraduate classes, especially on nuclear and nuclear physics. Each of his lectures was of two hours and every year he would rewrite his lecture notes.

The high-tension laboratory quickly became known internationally. When foreign scientists visited Pakistan, they wanted to see this laboratory. In 1958, Prince Philip visited the laboratory and observed more than twenty experiments. At the end of the visit, the sentence would be heard, 'It is heartening to see that there is an atmosphere like Cavendish here.' ‘

It was later renamed the Center for Advanced Studies in Physics.

Prof. M. Ikram-ul-Haq has written that Dr. Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry, the founder of experimental nuclear physics in Pakistan and the real architect of Pakistan's nuclear capability, remains an unsung hero to this day. Dr. Rafi Chaudhary was forced to retire in 1958 at the age of 55 with a nominal pension of Rs 600 per month.

But Dr Munawar Chaudhary says that he retired from the Physics Department in 1958 on reaching the age of 55 as per government rules.

He was then briefly appointed director of the High Tension and Nuclear Research Laboratory. Then they were extended until 1965. If they were not allowed to continue, it would have been a disaster for the laboratory. There was still a lot to be done but the government did not give them any further extension, they were unhappy about it. ‘

In the early 1970s, he joined the Centre for Solid State Physics at The Punjab University. Here he established a new research laboratory for plasma physics.

In this laboratory, he trained many students of the university for MSc and MPhil. A large number of papers related to this work were also written and published.

Dr. Rafi Chaudhry was associated with Punjab University from the very beginning. He served as honorary professor at Punjab University from 1960 to 1977. In 1977, The Punjab University appointed him professor emeritus for life.

Dr. Rafi Chaudhry also conducted research on nuclear technology at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. He was the first director of the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology and played an important role in the installation of nuclear particle accelerators there.

He was also part of the first reactor's monitoring team. In 1967, he oversaw a team of scientists who successfully developed the first batch of radioisotopes.

In January 1972, Dr. Rafi Chaudhry attended the Multan meeting convened by President Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to decide the nuclear strategy.

Professor Dr. Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry wrote 53 research papers between 1932 and 1988, which adorned various international journals. He was granted membership, fellowship or chairmanship by many domestic and international organizations and organizations for his outstanding scientific services.

In recognition of his services, he was awarded Sitara Khidmat (1964), Sitara-i-Imtiaz (1982) and Hilal-e-Imtiaz (2005).

On December 4, 1988, Dr Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry passed away after a brief illness.

Harold Fritzsch and Murray Gellman wrote in their book 'Fifty Years of Quarks' that '11 of Rutherford's students, colleagues and members of his laboratory received the Nobel Prize in Physics or Chemistry.' Many have accomplished glorious but lesser-known feats.

Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry became a pioneer in experimental nuclear physics and along with his student Mustafa Yar Khan founded Pakistan's successful nuclear weapons program. ‘