1. Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy is a Pakistani nuclear physicist, author, media commentator, and social activist.
23 Facts About Pervez Hoodbhoy
1. 2.
Pervez Hoodbhoy is generally considered one of the most vocal, progressive and liberal member of the Pakistani intelligentsia.
3.
Pervez Hoodbhoy taught physics at Quaid-e-Azam University from 1973 to 2020 but in between taught sociology in addition to physics and math at FCCU and LUMS.
4.
Since 1989 Pervez Hoodbhoy has headed Mashal Books in Lahore, a publishing house that claims to be a leading "translation effort to produce books in Urdu that promote modern thought, human rights, and emancipation of women".
5.
Pervez Hoodbhoy is a sponsor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists a member of the Permanent Monitoring Panel on Planetary Emergencies of the World Federation of Scientists, and a member of the Asia Pacific Leaders Network.
6.
Pervez Hoodbhoy has written for Project Syndicate, DAWN, The New York Times, Washington Post, Prospect magazine, and The Express Tribune.
7.
Awards for Hoodbhoy include the Abdus Salam Prize for Mathematics ; the Kalinga Prize for the popularization of science ; the TWAS-ROCASA prize; the Jean Meyer Award for global citizenship; the Joseph A Burton Forum Award from the American Physical Society.
8.
However Pervez Hoodbhoy turned down the award on grounds that bureaucrats and non-scientists were not capable judging scientific work or deciding on scientific awards.
9.
Pervez Hoodbhoy was born and raised in Karachi, Sindh, in a family belonging to the Gujarati Khoja Ismaili Shia community.
10.
Pervez Hoodbhoy later identified as a Humanist and became an official signatory of Humanist Manifesto III.
11.
Pervez Hoodbhoy has one elder brother, and three sisters including infectious diseases specialist Dr Naseem Salahuddin and reporter Nafisa Hoodbhoy.
12.
Pervez Hoodbhoy has been married twice, first to Hajra Ahmed, niece of public intellectual and activist Eqbal Ahmad.
13.
At MIT Pervez Hoodbhoy did a double major in Electric Engineering and Mathematics, and an MEng in Physics, with a concentration in solid-state physics in 1973.
14.
Pervez Hoodbhoy was awarded a doctorate in nuclear physics in 1978 with a thesis titled, "Time Dependent Correlations in Nuclear Dynamics".
15.
In 1981 Pervez Hoodbhoy accepted an offer for post-doctoral research at the University of Washington.
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Pervez Hoodbhoy moved to the Forman Christian College-University as distinguished professor of physics until his contract was abruptly cancelled as well after 8 years.
17.
Pervez Hoodbhoy contends that these terminations were due to extra-academic reasons.
18.
Away from his specialized field of research, Pervez Hoodbhoy writes and speaks on a variety of topics and is a self-described liberal.
19.
Pervez Hoodbhoy has continued to insist that attitudinal reasons, not paucity of resources, are responsible for the stagnation of the sciences in Islam.
20.
Salam and Pervez Hoodbhoy jointly authored an essay in 1984 that critiqued Eurocentric claims to developing science.
21.
Pervez Hoodbhoy has been the leading critic of Pakistan's Higher Education Commission whose policies, he contends, have incentivized academic corruption and created a professor mafia.
22.
Pervez Hoodbhoy is a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials, based at Princeton University.
23.
From 1991 to 2004 Pervez Hoodbhoy hosted and authored three major 13-part documentary series in Urdu on Pakistan Television on popular science and education.