Abul Khair Nazmul Karim (1 August 1922 – 18 November 1982) was a Bangladeshi sociologist and academic.

He was the seventh of eight children of Abu Rashid Nizamuddin Mahmood Ahmed and Mossammat Shamsun Neda Khatun.

Karim passed his Entrance examination in 1939 in First Division from Thakurgaon High, English School.

He studied simultaneously "Government" and "Sociology", and earned a master's degree separately in both disciplines from Columbia University in 1953.

He studied under Herbert Marcuse, Seymour Lipset, Ajit Kumar Sen, Robert Morrison MacIver, C. Wright Mills, Debendro Nath Banerjee, Morris Ginsberg, Raymond Firth and others.

For his scholarly performance, he won a Rockefeller Scholarship to go to the London School of Economics & Political Science, where he was awarded a doctoral degree in sociology under the supervision of Professor T. B. Bottomore in 1964.

Since 1983, Dr. Nazmul Karim Memorial Gold Medal has been awarded to the student who stood First Class, First, in M.A.