Mujaddid Ahmed Ijaz,

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

(

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
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experimental physicist Experimental physics is the category of disciplines and sub-disciplines in the field of physics that are concerned with the observation of physical phenomena and experiments. Methods vary from discipline to discipline, from simple experiments and o ...

noted for his role in discovering new

isotope Isotopes are two or more types of atoms that have the same atomic number (number of protons in their nuclei) and position in the periodic table (and hence belong to the same chemical element), and that differ in nucleon numbers (mass numbers) ...

s that expanded the neutron-deficient side of the atomic chart. Some of the isotopes he discovered enabled significant advances in medical research, particularly in the treatment of cancer, and further advanced the experimental understanding of nuclear structures. Ijaz conducted his research work at

Oak Ridge National Laboratories Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a U.S. multiprogram science and technology national laboratory sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and administered, managed, and operated by UT–Battelle as a federally funded research and ...

(ORNL). He and his ORNL colleagues published more than 60 papers in physics journals announcing isotope discoveries and other results of their accelerator experiments from 1968 until 1983. Ijaz participated in the U.S. ''

Atoms for Peace "Atoms for Peace" was the title of a speech delivered by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the UN General Assembly in New York City on December 8, 1953. The United States then launched an "Atoms for Peace" program that supplied equipment ...

'' initiative during the 1970s. The program provided a number of third-world countries, including Pakistan, with civilian nuclear reactor technology to develop energy for peaceful purposes. As a tenured professor of Physics at

Virginia Tech Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also ...

, he acted as thesis adviser to graduate students from around the world in experimental physics disciplines. Ijaz made extensive trips abroad during his career, including sabbaticals as a visiting professor at Saudi Arabia's

King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) ( ar, جامعة الملك فهد للبترول و المعادن, – short: ar, جامعة البترول ), after 1975 as the University of Petroleum and Minerals and initially as the ...

. in the early 1980s and as a visiting faculty member at the

Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) is an international research institute for physical and mathematical sciences that operates under a tripartite agreement between the Italian Government, United Nations Education ...

in Trieste, Italy in 1985. He retired

Professor Emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

of Physics from Virginia Tech in December 1991 after a 27-year career in teaching and research. Ijaz and his wife emigrated to the United States and settled in Virginia, where they had five children. He died in 1992 after a battle with cancer.

Early life and education

Mujaddid Ijaz was born on June 12, 1937 in Baddomalhi,

British Indian Empire The British Raj (; from Hindi language, Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British The Crown, Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Q ...

. His father was a medical student who died in his mid-20s of brain cancer. His mother, a homemaker, remarried. He was the third of ten children in his family. Ijaz's early education was made at rural village schools near Baddomalhi. He attended

Islamia High School Islamia English School ( ar, مدرسة الإسلامية الإنجليزية), abbreviated as IES, is an English Medium School located in the Al-Dhafra neighborhood of Abu Dhabi. It was rated as satisfactory by the ADEC. The majority of the ...

in Lahore. His early interest in science and physics was attributed to his step-father's work in the local meteorology department. After graduating from high school and finishing college entrance exam requirements, Ijaz was admitted to Government College in Lahore. There, he majored in physics and graduated with a B.Sc. in 1957. He continued advanced studies under the tutelage of Prof.

Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry ( ur, ) Fellow of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences, FPAS Hilal-i-Imtiaz, HI, Nishan-e-Imtiaz, NI, Sitara-i-Imtiaz, SI, Civil decorations of Pakistan, Skdt (1 July 1903 – 4 December 1988) best known as R. M. Chaudhry, wa ...

, widely considered a pioneer in Pakistani

experimental physics Experimental physics is the category of disciplines and sub-disciplines in the field of physics that are concerned with the observation of physical phenomena and experiments. Methods vary from discipline to discipline, from simple experiments and ...

, until 1959 when he met Razia Begum Nazir. They later married and emigrated to the United States in 1960. Ijaz and his wife arrived in

Tallahassee Tallahassee ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat and only incorporated municipality in Leon County. Tallahassee became the capital of Florida, then the Florida Territory, in 1824. In 2020, the population ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

in August 1960, where they settled as incoming graduate students at

Florida State University Florida State University (FSU) is a public research university in Tallahassee, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida. Founded in 1851, it is located on the oldest continuous site of higher education in the st ...

. He developed an early interest in particle physics and accelerator experiments while at

Florida State Florida State University (FSU) is a public university, public research university in Tallahassee, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida. Founded in 1851, it is located on the oldest continuous site of higher e ...

, from where he graduated in June 1962 with a master's degree in Physics. His thesis was titled ''Study of Angular Distributions of Elastically Scattered 8 to 19 Mev Alpha Particles from Al27'' and from Ohio University in May 1964 with a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics with a thesis titled ''Proton-Proton Collisions at 2.0 BeV''.

Academic and scientific research career

Virginia Polytechnic Institute

Mujaddid Ijaz joined the faculty of the

Physics department in September 1964 as an Assistant Professor of Physics. In his early years as a faculty member, Ijaz devoted much of his time to his teaching responsibilities, including acting as adviser to the university's roster of graduate students and doctoral candidates. He conducted his early research at the Physics department's newly installed nuclear reactor, which at the time was equipped with a

neutron activation analysis Neutron activation analysis (NAA) is the nuclear process used for determining the concentrations of elements in many materials. NAA allows discrete sampling of elements as it disregards the chemical form of a sample, and focuses solely on atomic ...

laboratory. Ijaz's early experimental results earned him an appointment as research collaborator at the

in 1966 under a ''University Isotope Separator at Oak Ridge'' (UNISOR) grant funded by the U.S. Energy Department. In 1974, Ijaz launched a ''Distinguished Visitors Colloquium Series'' under the Physics department's sponsorship that brought world-renowned physicists to the Blacksburg campus for nearly a decade. Visiting scholars included Salam,

Sheldon Glashow Sheldon Lee Glashow (, ; born December 5, 1932) is a Nobel Prize-winning American theoretical physicist. He is the Metcalf Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Boston University and Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at Harvard U ...

, and Nobel physics laureates

Hans Bethe Hans Albrecht Bethe (; July 2, 1906 – March 6, 2005) was a German-American theoretical physicist who made major contributions to nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum electrodynamics, and solid-state physics, and who won the 1967 Nobel Prize ...

Robert Hofstadter Robert Hofstadter (February 5, 1915 – November 17, 1990) was an American physicist. He was the joint winner of the 1961 Nobel Prize in Physics (together with Rudolf Mössbauer) "for his pioneering studies of electron scattering in atomic nucle ...

Eugene Wigner Eugene Paul "E. P." Wigner ( hu, Wigner Jenő Pál, ; November 17, 1902 – January 1, 1995) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who also contributed to mathematical physics. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his con ...

and

Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superflu ...

. Noted Chinese physicist Luke W. Mo (whose group at the

Stanford Linear Accelerator SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford University under the programmatic direction of the U.S. Departm ...

had won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1990) also lectured at Virginia Tech. Ijaz attained the rank of Full Professor of Physics in 1977, and during the same year served as acting head of the Physics department. After several foreign sabbaticals in the 1980s, the first at U.P.M. in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia from 1979 until 1981 and another at I.C.T.P. in 1985, he continued his teaching duties at Virginia Tech until retirement in December 1991 as Professor Emeritus of Physics. During the latter part of his career, Ijaz published papers that focused on methods and results in teaching, religion and science and other aspects of physics that did not form part of his technical research in earlier years. Also a physicist and teaching researcher at Virginia Tech, Lubna Razia Ijaz established a scholarship in 1996 that is awarded to students involved in physics education.

Oak Ridge National Laboratories

Mujaddid Ijaz began his research work at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ORNL) in 1966 under Virginia Tech funding contributed to the UNISOR program. UNISOR was a consortium at that time of 13 institutions whose research scientists were collaborating at Oak Ridge supported by U.S. Energy Department grants together with

Oak Ridge Associated Universities Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) is a consortium of American universities headquartered in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with offices in Arlington, Virginia, Arvada, Colorado, Belcamp, Maryland, Cincinnati, Ohio and staff at other locations acro ...

, of which Virginia Tech was one. Ijaz's research focused on the discovery of new

s using ORNL's

High Flux Isotope Reactor The High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) is a nuclear research reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, United States. Operating at 85 MW, HFIR is one of the highest flux reactor-based sources of neutrons for condense ...

. The reactor was built in 1965 with the highest

neutron flux The neutron flux, φ, is a scalar quantity used in nuclear physics and nuclear reactor physics. It is the total length travelled by all free neutrons per unit time and volume. Equivalently, it can be defined as the number of neutrons travelling ...

of any reactor at the time. It produced more medical isotopes while allowing higher fidelity of materials research than any other reactor available in the U.S. Energy Department's science and energy laboratory system during the 1970s. Ijaz and his colleagues at Oak Ridge, led by Kenneth S. Toth, used the High Flux Reactor to discover new isotopes and map characteristics of existing isotopes, including

s of

Erbium Erbium is a chemical element with the symbol Er and atomic number 68. A silvery-white solid metal when artificially isolated, natural erbium is always found in chemical combination with other elements. It is a lanthanide, a rare-earth element ...

Ytterbium Ytterbium is a chemical element with the symbol Yb and atomic number 70. It is a metal, the fourteenth and penultimate element in the lanthanide series, which is the basis of the relative stability of its +2 oxidation state. However, like the othe ...

Thulium Thulium is a chemical element with the symbol Tm and atomic number 69. It is the thirteenth and third-last element in the lanthanide series. Like the other lanthanides, the most common oxidation state is +3, seen in its oxide, halides and other c ...

Osmium Osmium (from Greek grc, ὀσμή, osme, smell, label=none) is a chemical element with the symbol Os and atomic number 76. It is a hard, brittle, bluish-white transition metal in the platinum group that is found as a trace element in alloys, mos ...

Hafnium Hafnium is a chemical element with the symbol Hf and atomic number 72. A lustrous, silvery gray, tetravalent transition metal, hafnium chemically resembles zirconium and is found in many zirconium minerals. Its existence was predicted by Dmitri M ...

Tungsten Tungsten, or wolfram, is a chemical element with the symbol W and atomic number 74. Tungsten is a rare metal found naturally on Earth almost exclusively as compounds with other elements. It was identified as a new element in 1781 and first isolat ...

Mercury Mercury commonly refers to: * Mercury (planet), the nearest planet to the Sun * Mercury (element), a metallic chemical element with the symbol Hg * Mercury (mythology), a Roman god Mercury or The Mercury may also refer to: Companies * Merc ...

Titanium Titanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ti and atomic number 22. Found in nature only as an oxide, it can be reduced to produce a lustrous transition metal with a silver color, low density, and high strength, resistant to corrosion in ...

, and

Lead Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cu ...

. In December 1982, physicists at the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...

used the mercury isotopes discovered by Toth, Ijaz et al. to successfully model behavior expected of heavier particles than traditional accelerator experiments could produce at the time due to energy limitations. During the 1970s, Ijaz participated in the ''Atoms for Peace'' initiative created by

President Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...

in 1953 to help the post-World War II international community cope with nuclear power. Pakistan's first facility, a 5 MW PARR-I pool-type facility, was provided by the United States in 1965. The reactor began operations on December 21, 1965 under the supervision of Pakistani scientists led by Abdus Salam.

Notable collaborations

Mujaddid Ijaz collaborated with notable physicists and mathematicians throughout his 27-year career. Most notable among these were his collaborations with

Abdus Salam Mohammad Abdus Salam Salam adopted the forename "Mohammad" in 1974 in response to the anti-Ahmadiyya decrees in Pakistan, similarly he grew his beard. (; ; 29 January 192621 November 1996) was a Punjabi Pakistani theoretical physicist and a ...

whose groundbreaking work in

electroweak interaction In particle physics, the electroweak interaction or electroweak force is the unified description of two of the four known fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetism and the weak interaction. Although these two forces appear very differe ...

s together with American physicists

Steven Weinberg Steven Weinberg (; May 3, 1933 – July 23, 2021) was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interactio ...

and

earned them the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979. In 1976, Salam recommended creating an international forum for the advancement of science and technology to be hosted by Pakistan in the Hazara region while serving as Science Advisor to the

Prime Minister of Pakistan The prime minister of Pakistan ( ur, , romanized: Wazīr ē Aʿẓam , ) is the head of government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Executive authority is vested in the prime minister and his chosen cabinet, despite the president of Paki ...

. Since then, the Nathiagali Physics Conferences has gathered notable scientists from around the world during summer breaks to break the intellectual isolation faced by Pakistani scientists. Ijaz participated in these conferences several times during the mid-1970s under

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

grants. He was also a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

and a fellow of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

Personal life

Mujaddid Ijaz at his Virginia home with his wife and children ca 1982

Mujaddid Ijaz was an

Ahmadi Ahmadiyya (, ), officially the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community or the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at (AMJ, ar, الجماعة الإسلامية الأحمدية, al-Jamāʿah al-Islāmīyah al-Aḥmadīyah; ur, , translit=Jamā'at Aḥmadiyyah Musl ...

. He married Razia Begum (''nee'' Nazir) in June 1960 prior to emigrating to the United States. Razia later took her husband's chosen name, Lubna, when they both became naturalized American citizens on January 5, 1970. They had five children:

Mansoor Mansour ( ar, منصور, Manṣūr); also spelled Mounsor, Monsur (Bengali), Mansoor, Manser, Mansur, Mansyur (Indonesian) or Mensur (Turkish), is a male Arabic name that means "He who is victorious", from the Arabic root '' naṣr'' (نصر), m ...

, Farouk, Atif and Mujeeb. Neelam, their only daughter, was born in Pakistan. The Ijazes initially settled in Blacksburg, where Virginia Tech was situated, and lived there from 1964 until 1969. After several years of living in the rural community of

Floyd, Virginia Floyd is a town in Floyd County, Virginia, United States. The population was 425 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Floyd County. The Town of Floyd was originally named Jacksonville as the surrounding county was formed during the tenur ...

, they returned to Christiansburg, a township near Virginia Tech, in 1973, building a home in the Appalachian Mountains that today remains the family's homestead. Mujaddid Ijaz died on July 9, 1992 at his home in

Shawsville, Virginia Shawsville is a census-designated place (CDP) in Montgomery County, Virginia, United States. The population was 1,310 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Blacksburg– Christiansburg Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of ...

of complications arising from a protracted battle with brain and lung cancer. He was buried in traditional Muslim rituals at the site of his most favored farm in Alum Ridge, surrounded by a large gathering of his family from around the United States and his physics colleagues and friends from southwestern Virginia. President

George H. W. Bush George Herbert Walker BushSince around 2000, he has been usually called George H. W. Bush, Bush Senior, Bush 41 or Bush the Elder to distinguish him from his eldest son, George W. Bush, who served as the 43rd president from 2001 to 2009; pr ...

consoled Ijaz's widow in a letter dated July 24, 1992.

Selected publications

* * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ijaz, Mujaddid Ahmed 1937 births 1992 deaths American Muslims Government College University, Lahore alumni Florida State University alumni Ohio University alumni Virginia Tech faculty Oak Ridge National Laboratory people Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Physical Society Experimental physicists Pakistani nuclear physicists Pakistani scholars Pakistani emigrants to the United States Scientists from Lahore Punjabi people People from Christiansburg, Virginia American Ahmadis Deaths from cancer in Virginia 20th-century American physicists American academics of Pakistani descent People from Floyd, Virginia People from Shawsville, Virginia Scientists from Virginia