Zubair Qureshi
Islamabad
A prestigious international journal ‘Molecules’ has decided to bring out a special issue to acknowledge the contributions of Prof Dr Atta-Ur-Rahman, Pakistan’s eminent scientist and former Chairman of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) for his achievements for science.
In a recent statement, a spokesman of the International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), University of Karachi said as Coordinator General COMSTECH Prof. Rahman helped tens of thousands of young scientists in over 40 countries of the Islamic world.
The international journal in recognition of the achievements of Dr Atta has decided to dedicate a special issue to the great scientist and educationist of Pakistan.
It may be mentioned here that the International Society of Nucleosides, Nucleotides & Nucleic Acids (IS3NA), the Spanish Society of Medicinal Chemistry (SEQT) and the International Society of Heterocyclic Chemistry (ISHC) are affiliated with ‘Molecules.’
Dr Atta transformed the mobile telephone industry by bringing in major reforms including the Calling Part Pays regime that allowed citizens to receive calls on mobile phones without charges. These led to a huge boost in the number of mobile phones from only 300,000 phones in the year 2000, now to over 160 million phones.
As the Founding Chairman of the Higher Education Commission during 2002 to 2008, the reforms he introduced reforms and completely transformed the higher education sector. The impact was so huge, particularly in research, that Pakistan forged ahead of India in the number of international research publications per capita.
In the current government, Prof. Atta-ur Rahman has been appointed as Chairman of Prime
Minister’s Task Force on Science and Technology, Vice Chairman of Prime Minister’s Task Force on Technology Driven Knowledge-Economy, and Co-Chair, Task Force on Information Technology. Prof. Atta-ur-Rahman obtained his Ph.D. in organic
chemistry from Cambridge University (1968). He has 1232 publications in several fields of organic chemistry including 771 research publications, 45 international patents, 70 chapters in books and 346 books published largely by major U.S. and European
presses. He is the Editor-in-Chief of eight European Chemistry journals.
Prof. Atta-ur-Rahman has also been honoured with various international prestigious awards like UNESCO Science prize, FRS, Friendship Award of China, and many others. Prof. Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman is one of the decorated scientists of
Pakistan having won four civil awards by the government of Pakistan, including Tamgha-i-Imtiaz (1983), Sitara-i-Imtiaz (1991), Hilal-i-Imtiaz (1998), and the highest national civil award Nishan-i-Imtiaz (2002).
