Atta-ur-Rahman

Atta-ur-Rahman was born on 22 September 1942 in Delhi, in what was then British India, into an educated family with a tradition of public service. His grandfather, Sir Abdur Rahman, had served as a judge and as vice chancellor of Delhi University, an inheritance of academic seriousness that shaped the household ^[1]. After the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 the family moved to the new state of Pakistan and settled in Karachi, the port city that would remain the center of his working life.

He completed his schooling in Karachi and enrolled at the University of Karachi, where he took a bachelor's degree with honors in chemistry in 1963 and a master's degree the following year ^[1]. His performance won him a scholarship to the University of Cambridge, then one of the leading centers for organic chemistry anywhere. At Cambridge he joined the research group working on the chemistry of indole alkaloids and received his PhD in organic chemistry in 1968 from King's College ^[2].

The Cambridge years fixed the direction of his research. Alkaloids, the nitrogen containing compounds that plants produce and that include substances of great medical value, became his lifelong subject. Rather than remain in Britain, he returned to Karachi to build a career at a time when experimental chemistry in Pakistan had thin resources and little international visibility ^[2].

Back in Karachi, Atta-ur-Rahman joined the University of Karachi and became associated with the postgraduate institute of chemistry that grew into the H. E. J. Research Institute of Chemistry, named for the philanthropist Hussain Ebrahim Jamal. He served for many years as its director and turned it into the strongest center for natural product chemistry in Pakistan, later folded into the International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences ^[3].

His group concentrated on isolating and determining the structures of compounds from medicinal plants of Pakistan and the wider region, including alkaloids from Rauwolfia, Buxus, and other genera used in traditional remedies. The work combined classical isolation techniques with modern spectroscopy, and he became known for applying nuclear magnetic resonance methods to the structure elucidation of complex natural molecules ^[2]. Over a career spanning more than five decades he published research papers, reviews, and books in very large numbers, and he founded and edited the long running book series Studies in Natural Products Chemistry, published by Elsevier, which became a standard reference in the field ^[4].

Recognition arrived steadily. He received the UNESCO Science Prize in 1999, the first scientist from the Muslim world to do so, for contributions to chemistry and to the development of science in his region ^[5]. He was elected to The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and later served as a vice president of that body, strengthening his ties to scientists across the developing world ^[6].

Any account of Atta-ur-Rahman achievements has to weigh two careers, one scientific and one administrative. In 2000 he entered government as Federal Minister of Science and Technology in Pakistan, and in 2002 he became the founding chairman of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), a new body with cabinet level standing created to overhaul the country's universities ^[7]. He held that post until 2008.

Under his chairmanship the public budget for higher education rose many times over, and the commission financed thousands of scholarships for Pakistani students to pursue doctorates at foreign universities on the condition that they return to teach and do research. The HEC installed a national digital library giving universities access to international journals, laid fiber optic connectivity between campuses, introduced a tenure track pay system to attract qualified faculty, and tied university funding to measurable research output ^[7]. The reforms drew international attention: the journal Nature and other observers described the period as a marked transformation of Pakistani higher education, even as some local academics debated whether rapid expansion had come at the cost of quality ^[8].

His scientific standing received its most visible confirmation in 2006, when he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, cited for his contributions to natural product chemistry ^[2]. Pakistan honored him with its highest civil decorations, including the Nishan-i-Imtiaz, and in 2015 he was elected a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, reflecting his role in building scientific cooperation between Pakistan and China ^[1]. China later named a research center in Hunan after him, and he received the country's International Science and Technology Cooperation Award ^[3].

A recurring theme in Atta-ur-Rahman's public life has been the state of science across Muslim majority countries. From 1996 he served as Coordinator General of COMSTECH, the standing committee on scientific and technological cooperation of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, a platform he used to argue that member states spent far too little on research and higher education ^[6].

In articles, lectures, and interviews he pressed the case that economic progress in the developing world depends on investment in knowledge rather than on natural resources alone. He pointed repeatedly to the small share of global scientific output produced by the Islamic world and urged governments to fund universities, reward researchers, and connect their institutions to international networks ^[8]. The argument was the intellectual core of his HEC program, and it made him a frequently quoted commentator in international coverage of science in the region.

He also worked as an editor and organizer on a large scale. Besides Studies in Natural Products Chemistry, he served as editor in chief of journals in medicinal chemistry and organic chemistry published by Bentham Science, and he organized international symposia in Karachi that brought foreign chemists to Pakistan at a time when few scientific meetings of global standing were held there ^[4].

After leaving the Higher Education Commission in 2008, Atta-ur-Rahman returned to research and to institution building in Karachi. He continued as a leading figure at the International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences at the University of Karachi, which by then housed advanced instrumentation, a genomics facility, and programs in pharmacology alongside its original chemistry laboratories ^[3].

He remained active in public debate about education policy, defending the record of the HEC reforms when later governments reduced funding, and writing regular newspaper columns on science, technology, and national development in the Pakistani press ^[8]. In 2018 the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan appointed him chairman of a national task force on science and technology, returning him to an advisory role at the center of policy ^[7].

Honors continued to accumulate in this period, among them international prizes for science diplomacy and cooperation, honorary doctorates from universities in several countries, and continued leadership positions at COMSTECH and in academies across Asia ^[6]. Well into his eighties he kept publishing, editing, and lecturing, an unusually long span of sustained scientific activity.

The most concrete part of the Atta-ur-Rahman biography is measurable: laboratories built, journals founded, students trained, and a national funding system created where little had existed. Colleagues and critics alike treat the HEC years as a turning point for Pakistani academia, and the debate over how to evaluate that expansion, quantity of publications against depth of scholarship, is itself part of his legacy ^[8].

In chemistry, his school of natural product research in Karachi trained generations of Pakistani scientists, many of whom now lead departments at home and abroad. The H. E. J. Institute and its successor center are regularly described as among the strongest research institutions in the country, and UNESCO and TWAS have both used them as examples of what sustained investment can build in a developing economy ^[3].

Atta-ur-Rahman facts often cited in profiles include his Royal Society fellowship, his roughly half century of work on alkaloid chemistry, and his advocacy for research spending across the Islamic world. Whether remembered chiefly as a chemist or as a reformer, he demonstrated that a scientist from a country with limited resources could shape both an international field and a national system ^[5].