Munir Ahmad Khan - Early Professional Work - International Centre For Theoretical Physics

International Centre For Theoretical Physics

Since 1940s, Munir Khan and the Nobel Laureate in Physics, Professor Abdus Salam were associates who studied Physics and Mathematics together at Government College, Lahore. Khan recognised the importance of Theoretical physics, and had studied its "real world" applications that related to the field of nuclear engineering, whilst trying to solve the reactor physics problems. During 1967, he and Salam prepared a proposal for setting up a nuclear fuel and plutonium reprocessing plant in Pakistan, which was deferred by President Field Marshal Ayub Khan on economic grounds.

In fact, Khan was the first person at the IAEA who was consulted by Abdus Salam in September 1960 about the establishment of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste. Khan played a very important role in the establishment of the ICTP by way of securing the support of the IAEA the cause. According to Khan, Nobel laureate Isidor Rabi and Homi Bhabha, members of the scientific advisory committee of IAEA, unanimously opposed the establishment of ICTP. Privately, Bhabha wanted to establish the ICTP in Mumbai, but Salam refused. Therefore, Khan teamed up with Salam and established the ICTP in Italy, despite many initiatives taken against it. Following the same tradition, in 1976, Abdus Salam and Munir Khan established the Annual international Nathiagali Summer College on Theoretical Physics and Contemporary Needs in Pakistan where the first conference was held on Theoretical physics and Quantum Mechanics in 1976. Munir Khan took special interest in holding the first INSC in 1976 and since then it has evolved into an annual event and an institution for interaction between Nobel Laureates and scientists from the developing world. He invited hundreds of scientists from all over the world to come to Pakistan and interact with Pakistani scientists.

In December 1972, Abdus Salam directed two Pakistani theoretical physicists, Riazuddin and Masud Ahmad, who were working under him at the ICTP, to report to Munir Khan on their return to Pakistan where they formed the "Theoretical Physics Group" (TPG) in PAEC. This group would go on to develop the theoretical design of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

On August 1996, Khan met Abdus Salam in Oxford. Khan wrote:

My last meeting with Abdus Salam was only three months ago. His disease had taken its toll and he was unable to talk. Yet he understood what was said. I told him about the celebration held in Pakistan on his seventieth birthday. He kept staring at me. He had risen above praise. As I rose to leave he pressed my hand to express his feelings as if he wanted to thank everyone who had said kind words about him. Dr. Abdus Salam had deep love for Pakistan in spite of the fact that he was treated unfairly and indifferently by his own country. It became more and more difficult for him to come to Pakistan and this hurt him deeply. Now he has returned home finally, to rest in peace for ever in the soil that he loved so much. May be in the years to come we will rise above our prejudice and own him and give him, after his death, what we could not when he was alive... —Munir Ahmad Khan paying tribute to Abdus Salam,

Munir Khan's efforts at lobbying for the up-gradation and strengthening of the Center for Nuclear Studies/Institute of Applied Sciences--which he had established in 1976 as Pakistan's premier institute for indigenous training and education of nuclear scientists and engineers--resulted in CNS being awarded university accredition in 1997 as a full-fledged engineering university status by the government in 2000, culminating as the Pakistan Institue of Engineering and Applied Sciences (PIEAS).