Tasneem Zehra Husain

Tasneem Zehra Husain is a Pakistani theoretical physicist. She has represented Pakistan at the Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany and led the Pakistan team to the World Year of Physics (WYP) Launch Conference in Paris. In 2013, Husain was invited by the Cambridge Science Festival to be the moderator for a panel of eminent scientists.

Biography

Early life Husain received her early education in Lahore. At the age of eleven, Husain dropped out of a regular school and was home schooled. Husain sat for her O Levels (privately, through the British Council) at the age of 13 and went on to take her A Levels at the age of 15. During these years, Husain wrote extensively. In 1988, she won an international essay competition held by the Children as the Peacemakers Foundation based in California, USA. Husain obtained her PhD in Theoretical Physics from Stockholm University in 2003, where her thesis advisor was Ansar Fayyazuddin. She completed her PhD in theoretical physics at the age of twenty six, becoming the first Pakistani woman string theorist, after which she went to Harvard University for a two-year-long post-doctoral research position.

Tasneem is also a writer, known for her novel, Only The Longest Threads. She also has written columns for 3quarksdaily.com, and teaches writing classes at CERN.

Advocate for science in Pakistan Husain has become a vocal and vehement supporter of science in Pakistan. Keenly interested in education and science popularisation in her country, she designed Pakistan's logo for the World Year of Physics (WYP) and was an active participant in the WYP Physics Stories project, led by Argonne National Laboratory of the United States. Husain helped the Lahore University of Management Sciences in establishing a School of Science and Engineering to allow students to stay in Pakistan to pursue an education in the sciences.

Husain has made contemporary efforts to make basic theoretical physics accessible to high-school students, and has developed a series of animated presentations which she delivered to various high school and college students.

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