Science and technology in Pakistan
Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan's first Prime Minister, initiated reforms to improve higher education and scientific research.
The International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences is a leading institution in this area, offering one of the largest postgraduate research programs in the country.
In terms of technology, Pakistan has made significant strides in nuclear physics and explosives engineering, primarily driven by security concerns.
[3] The major growth in scientific output occurred after the establishment of the Higher Education Commission, accompanied by a 60-fold increase in funding for science.
The chairperson of the Senate Standing Committee on Education hailed the first six years of HEC under Prof. Atta-ur-Rahman as "Pakistan's golden period.
With the establishment of nuclear and neutron institutes, Pakistan's mathematicians introduced complex mathematical applications to study and examine the behaviors of elements during the fission process.
Salimuzzaman Siddiqui, Atta-ur-Rahman and Iqbal Choudhary are the pioneering personalities for studying the isolation of unique chemical compounds from the Neem (Azadirachta indica), Rauvolfia, periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus), (Buxus papillosa) and various other plants.
However, after Zulfikar Ali Bhutto became president in 1972, he centralized scientific research under his socialist reforms and established the Ministry of Science, appointing Ishrat Hussain Usmani as its head.
Zia-ul-Haq, who took power in the 1980s, enforced pseudoscience in education and promoted Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan to export sensitive military technologies to Libya, Iran, and North Korea.
[8] In 2002, the University Grants Commission was replaced by the Higher Education Commission (HEC), tasked with reforming higher education by improving financial incentives, increasing university enrollment and PhD graduates, enhancing foreign scholarships and research collaborations, and providing state-of-the-art ICT facilities.
The HEC also provided free high-speed internet access to scientific literature and launched initiatives to create new universities and science parks.
[9] In 1961, Pakistan made international achievements by becoming the third Asian country and the tenth in the world to launch the Rehbar-I—a solid fuel expendable rocket—from Sonmani Spaceport.
[11] In 2006, Prof. Atta-ur-Rahman was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (London), becoming the first scientist from the Muslim world to receive this honor for his research conducted in an Islamic country.
He made significant contributions to the development of natural product chemistry, and several international journals have published special issues in recognition of his work.
[12] A landmark study by Thomson Reuters highlighted the impact of the reforms introduced by Atta-ur-Rahman, revealing that the rate of growth of highly cited papers from Pakistan over the past decade was greater than that of Brazil, Russia, India, or China.
