Ghulam Dastagir Alam

Ghulam Dastagir Alam Qasmi (Urdu: غلام دستگیر عالم قاسمی; popularly known as G.D. Alam; PhD, HI; 1937 – 5 December 2000), was a Pakistani theoretical physicist and professor of mathematics at the Quaid-e-Azam University. Alam is best known for conceiving and embarking on research on the gas centrifuge during Pakistan's integrated atomic bomb project in the 1970s, and he also conceived the research on charge density, nuclear fission, and gamma-ray bursts throughout his career. After the atomic bomb project, Alam joined the Department of Mathematics at the Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU) as well as serving as visiting faculty at the Institute of Physics, and co-authored papers on variation calculus and fission isomer. He was one of the notable theoretical physicists at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) and QAU. At one point, his fellow theorist, Munir Ahmad Khan, called Alam "the problem solving brain of the PAEC".

Biography Alam was educated at the Government College University in Lahore where he studied in 1951 and graduated with Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Mathematics in 1955 under the supervision of Abdus Salam–a theoretical physicist. He then went to attend the physics program at the Punjab University where he graduated with Master of Science (MSc) in Physics in 1957, supervised under Dr. Rafi Muhammad– a nuclear physicist. His thesis titled: The Emission of Electromagnetic Radiations from metals by high energy particles, had contained investigations on electromagnetic radiation emitted from the heavy metals by bombarding the elementary particles. In 1964, Alam joined the doctoral program in physics at the University College London (UCL) under the Colombo Plan Scholarship, initially joining the doctoral group led by British physicist, John B. Hasted. He learned the course on atomic physics under Harrie Massey and worked on experimental physics under J.B. Hasted. In 1967, he submitted his doctoral thesis supervised by Dr. J.B. Hasted which he defended successfully and graduated with Doctor of Philosophy in theoretical physics. His doctoral thesis, titled: Electron Capture by Multiply Charged Ions, provided scientific investigations on charge-crossing involving potential curve crossing, a concept in quantum mechanics. In 1967, he published another thesis jointly written by J.B. Hasted and D.K. Bohme on physics of atomic collision and potential energy curves— their work was supported and funded by the United States Department of Defense. While in the United Kingdom, Alam continued publishing and working on the atomic physics and atomic collisions, collaborating with many other of his British colleagues. However, Alam lost interests in atomic physics and became interested in computer programming and mathematics. In 1970, he published a paper on gamma rays and performed an experiment on isomers, proposing and later proving mathematically that, in the isomer state, the average kinetic energy associated with the decay process of Isomer state is about the same in the ground state of fission.

Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission

1971 war, atomic bomb program, and centrifuge technology

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.