Ishrat Hussain Usmani

Ishrat Hussain Usmani, NI (Urdu: ڈاکٹر عشرت حيسن عتثمانى‎ 15 April 1917 – 17 June 1992), best known as I. H. Usmani, was a Pakistani bureaucrat and an atomic physicist who was the second chairman of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) from 1960 to 1972; as well as the associate director of the Space Research Commission.

During his career, he was also the Chairman of the Board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1962 to 1963, and played a vital role there in country's peaceful development of nuclear technology to acquire the facilities. To his peer, he is remembered as one of chief architect of country's nuclear power expansion and also given co-credited to established country's first nuclear power plant in Karachi in co-operation with Canada, with Abdus Salam.

As a bureaucrat, he lobbied for science and development to become part of national politics and his efforts were also involved sending hundreds of young Pakistan's students abroad to pursue higher education in the field of nuclear technology. Due to his long tenure as chairman of the atomic energy commission, Usmani is colloquially known as father of the "atomic energy commission", a title given to his peers.

Usmani was born into a respected, cultural, upper middle class, and an educated family of Delhi and Aligarh. After his school education in Aligarh he joined his maternal uncle Dr Khwaja Abdul Hamied, the founder of CIPLA and a pioneer of pharmaceutical industry in India, and joined the St Xavier's College Bombay from where he obtained in 19, his BS (with honours) in Physics and later obtained MSc in Physics from Bombay University. In 1937, the Ishrat Usmani proceeded to the Imperial College, University of London, for research in atomic physics with the Nobel Laureate Professor P.M.S. Blackett, and he produced a thesis entitled "A study of the growth of compound crystals by electron diffraction" in 1939. He completed his doctorate in Atomic Physics from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, after writing a brief thesis on Electron diffraction, prior to start of World War II. He thereafter successfully appeared in the Indian Civil Service Examination (ICS)and became the first ever entrant to that service with a PhD. On Partition of the undivided India into post independent India and Pakistan he opted to serve in Pakistan and served the Government of Punjab.