Reza Mansouri

Reza Mansouri (Persian: رضا منصوری, born in 1948) is an Iranian physicist and astronomer and a retired professor of physics at Sharif University of Technology.

Without his efforts, Iran would not have been able to participate in international scientific collaborations such as SESAME (Middle-East Synchrotron) and the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator at CERN in Geneva.

He is one of the founders of Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics and was the head of its Astronomy School for several years, which is responsible for Iran's 3.4-meter national telescope (INO340.

He was the head of Iranian National Observatory from the beginning in 2004 to 2016, the time he was dismissed by Mohammad Javad Larijani, a far-right and infamous politician of Islamic republic of Iran.

During the years he was the head manager of INO, after a long time about one decade, site selection (an important and sensitive process of finding the best place for a large optical telescope based on several important parameters like climate, seeing, ...) led to the selection of Mount Gargash in the western south of Kashan in Karkas Chain as the permanent home of Iranian largest telescope.

Mahmoud Hesabi was a well-known Iranian physicist and senator who helped to improvement the education and scientific programmes in Iran in the early decades of 20th century who died in 1991.