Prof. Abdul Hameed Nayyar, generally known as Prof. A.H. Nayyar, is an eminent Pakistani physicist, author, and a freelance consultant on education, nuclear safety, and energy. His field of specialization is in the physics of condensed matter. He taught at the Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad from 1973 to 2005. Subsequently, he also taught at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). He is known for voicing for education reforms and military arms control, which he directed research programs at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad.
He believes that Pakistani textbooks are full of hate and distorted history is taught in Pakistan. Iran is the most advanced Islamic country in terms of science and technology.
He was born in Hyderabad Deccan in 1945. His family moved to Pakistan after Partition of India. He was educated in Karachi, and attended the Karachi University where he graduated with BSc in physics in 1964, and MSc in physics from Karachi University in 1966.
He obtained his PhD in condensed matter physics at London's Imperial College, one of the finest seats of higher learning in the world, in 1973. His thesis covered studies on magnetic properties of the excited electrons. Upon returning to Pakistan, he joined the Institute of Theoretical Physics (now Department of Physics) of the Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) and served on the faculty until 2005.
After leaving QAU in 2005, he became involved with the public policy issues regarding education, renewable and fuel cell energy at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), one of the best think tanks in South Asia, in Islamabad. Since 1998, Nayyar has been a visiting research scholar at Princeton University in the United States, and has been on the faculty to instruct courses on physics at the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan.
Prof. Nayyar co-edited the SDPI report "The Subtle Subversion: The State of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan", published in 2003, the report critically examined curriculum guidelines and textbook contents in the mainstream public school system of Pakistan. Here is the link to the report in question: https://sdpi.org/publications/the-subtle-subversion-the-state-of-curicula-and-textbooks-in-pakistan/
The report, which was intensely debated on public forums, eventually prompted the government to revise school curriculum and textbooks. Also from SDPI, he co-authored a critical appraisal of the National Education Policy, published in 2006. He has also researched and written on madrassa education. For over a year, he served as the executive director of Developments in Literacy, an organization of Pakistani Americans for philanthropic intervention in education to disadvantaged communities in Pakistan. Also for a year in 2010, he served as the director of the Ali Institute of Education, Lahore. He has since authored a number of articles further criticizing the state of education in Pakistan.
Prof. Nayyar also takes an active interest in the national and international peace movements. Dr. Nayyar is a member of the Global Council of Abolition 2000. Another area that interests him is nuclear disarmament. He holds a visiting position at the Program on Science and Global Security of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, US, where he spends summer months conducting technical studies on issues in nuclear disarmament. He is a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials.
In the area of renewable energy, the energy group at SDPI that he helped establish, has studied the question of marketability of renewable energy technologies with a view to identifying policy measures that could promote their use in Pakistan.
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The host, Shakil Chaudhary, is an alumnus of Government College, Lahore. Subsequently, he studied international relations in Islamabad and media in London. He has has worked for several English-language newspapers. He has written a critically acclaimed book, Handbook of Functional English (Ferozsons), to help those who wish to improve their English skills. If you want to see his most popular videos, here are the links to them.
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