Riazuddin

A distinguished teacher of several generations of Pakistanis and undoubtedly one of the outstanding physicists Pakistan produced after the legendary Abdus Salam, expired on September 9, 2013, after suffering from prostate cancer. Born in Ludhiana, India on November 10, 1930 and schooled in the same town of undivided (British) India, Riazuddin moved to Pakistan with his parents and rest of the family, including his twin brother, Fayyazuddin, as most Muslim families of Punjab opted to do after independence from Britain in 1947. He was initiated on the road to research in mathematical/theoretical physics by Salam himself during the latter’s professorship at Government College (GC), Lahore – an ‘ivy league’ institution of IndoPakistan subcontinent, affiliated with the Punjab University. The college has recently (2002) been elevated to the rank of an independent, public sector university (GCU) in Pakistan. Having graduated with a B.A. degree, with Honors in mathematics, in 1951 Riazuddin obtained a Master’s degree in mathematics, under the tutelage of Abdus Salam, from Punjab University, Lahore in 1953. Salam soon returned to Cambridge University in U.K. following his frustrating experience and feeling strongly isolated from the world of mainstream particle physics, in the then Pakistan. In 1955 Riazuddin followed Salam to Cambridge University, where Salam, by then an accomplished researcher of international standing in particle physics in his own right, supervised him as a Ph.D. research student. In 1957, Salam moved to Imperial College of the University of London, as a Professor of Physics. Later on he was joined by his academic colleague of yesteryears at Cambridge, P.T. Matthews, to set up an outstanding research group of the time in particle physics. Travelling to London once every week from Cambridge, to discuss the progress of his research with Salam, Riazuddin completed his Ph.D. work on the problem of charge dependent nuclear forces, in 1958. As part of this work, Riazuddin demonstrated that the leading source of charge dependent effect in nucleon-nucleon forces is the mass difference between charged and neutral pions. He returned to Pakistan as a Reader in Physics at the Punjab University soon thereafter. Having completed a stint of post-doctoral research at the University of Rochester from 1963-65, followed by about a year’s stay at the University of Pennsylvania in the US, he returned, in 1966, to take up the position of Director of the Institute of Physics of the newly established University of Islamabad, which was to become the premier academic institution of Pakistan with a strong research orientation, until then uncommon for the traditional academic institutions of the Country.

Riazuddin took up the challenge of setting up this new department and establishing its research credentials with utmost zeal and dedication. With his own tall standing in the field of particle physics research, he managed to attract not only the finest faculty to the Institute, but also leading personalities from the West, especially from the US, as visiting scientists on a regular basis. Research publications of high quality, in addition to research and academic programmes involving students, became an exhilarating experience for the graduate students and the faculty alike, during those early years of Islamabad University. Publications in prestigious journals like Physical Review Letters and the Physical Review became a routine, thanks to the leadership provided by Riazuddin. The principal focus of his own work was gauge theories and phenomenology of particle interactions. The high point of these achievements, justifiably, was the renowned Kawarabayashi-Suzuki-Riazuddin-Fayyazuddin (KSRF) relation proposed independently by K. Kawarabayashi and M. Suzuki (Phys. Rev. Lett. 16, 255, 7 Feb 1966) and by the twin brothers, Riazuddin and Fayyazuddin (Phys. Rev. 147, 1071, 29 July 1966). Professor Riazuddin’s friendship and collaborative research with academics of international stature, such as Prof. Robert E. Marshak of the University of Rochester and and Ciaran Ryan, originally from the University of Dublin in Ireland, led to the joint authorship of a landmark book, titled Theory of Weak Interactions in Particle Physics. His close association with US scientists like Prof. Michael J. Moravcsik of the University of Oregon was of great benefit to the development of University of Islamabad (which changed its name to Quaid-i-Azam University in 1976, to honour the birth centenary of the Founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah), in general, and of Particle Physics in Pakistan, in particular. He was able to attract some of the outstanding, internationally acclaimed scientists as visitors to his department of physics at Islamabad University, resulting in an atmosphere brimming with excitement and thrill of research at the frontiers of physics, of high motivational value for the graduate students. He also served as Member (Technical) of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission in mid-1970s, helping Pakistan succeed with its nuclear programme in 1980s. Later, after some years of research stay at institutions like ICTP, Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI) and University of Iowa, he served as Professor of Physics at the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, during the period 1982-1998. He returned from Saudi Arabia to take up the directorship of the newly established National Centre for Physics (NCP), proposed to replicate the international activities of the well recognized AS-ICTP, by its founder, Abdus Salam, in Trieste, Italy, to sustain high level of research activity in Physics in Pakistan and the region.

Riazuddin contributed in a fundamental manner in imparting high quality physics education and analytical capabilities to generations of Pakistani students by establishing an institution around himself which continues in the finest traditions left by him. Scores of his students who benefited from and imbibed those traditions would continue to cherish the fond memories of the excitement that his presence generated in the late 1960s and 1970s. His soft manners, gentle human dealings, almost infectious affability and kind disposition towards students and faculty alike would leave an indelible imprint on the hearts and minds of generations of physicists of Pakistan. Authorship of a number of well received and respected texts in theoretical particle physics and Quantum Mechanics, fellowships of a number of international learned bodies and academies and conferral of a number of prestigious awards, both national and international and his generous founding of a number of scholarships, from trust funds set up from his personal earnings, for the bright, but financially deprived students of physics will remain abiding legacies of this great physicist of Pakistan.