Pervez Hoodbhoy

Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy is a Pakistani nuclear physicist and author, born in Karachi on 11 July 1950. He is known for his opposition to nuclear weapons and his vocal defence of secularism, freedom of speech, scientific temper and education in Pakistan. He taught physics at Quaid-e-Azam University from 1973 to 2020, and since 1989 has headed Mashal Books in Lahore, a publishing house producing Urdu translations that promote modern thought, human rights and the emancipation of women. ¹

He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, taking bachelor's and master's degrees and a PhD, and joined Islamabad University — later Quaid-e-Azam University — as a junior lecturer in October 1973. He took postdoctoral research at the University of Washington in 1981 and was a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University in 1986, and also taught at Forman Christian College University and the Lahore University of Management Sciences. His physics work covers parton physics, hard processes, field theory and particle phenomenology. ¹

Provoked by General Zia-ul-Haq's programme of "Islamic science", he wrote Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality (1991), published with a preface by Abdus Salam, and translated into many languages. From 1991 to 2004 he hosted three 13-part Urdu documentary series on popular science and education for Pakistan Television. He has repeatedly defended Abdus Salam's memory in the Pakistani media. ¹

The English article records that he was born and raised in Karachi in a family belonging to the Sindhi Khoja Ismaili Shia community, and that he later identified as a Humanist and became an official signatory of Humanist Manifesto III. In his own article "Miracles, Wars, and Politics", he described himself in the first person among "atheists such as myself", writing of the exasperation of atheists at the immunity of religious belief to refutation. ^{1 2}

He received the Abdus Salam Award (1984), the Faiz Ahmed Faiz Award (1990), a Fulbright Award (1998), UNESCO's Kalinga Prize (2003), the ROCASA award for enhancing public understanding of science (2007) and the American Physical Society's Joseph A. Burton Forum Award (2010), and was listed among Foreign Policy magazine's Top 100 Global Thinkers. ¹