Ghulam Dastagir Alam

Ghulam Dastagir Alam Qasmi (; popularly known as G.D. Alam; ; 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.

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.

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.

Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission 1971 war, atomic bomb program, and centrifuge technology

Alam originally was not part of the team that was investigating the uranium enrichment under Bashiruddin Mahmood in 1974 and had not seen a gas centrifuge albeit of rudimentary knowledge from the work done by Jesse Beams, an American, in 1940s. At the Department of Mathematics, Alam pioneered a paper in Gamma-ray bursts using mathematical descriptions to analyse the energy released by the gamma rays. Alam died on 5 December 2000 in his residence in Islamabad.

Books

Science articles Fission fragment mass distributions and kinetic energies for spontaneous fission isomers, by R.L. Ferguson, F. Plasil, G.D. Alam†, H.W. Schmitt. Gamma Ray Transitions in the de-excitation Californium-253 spontenous fission pragments, by G.D. Alam, Department of Mathematics.