Munir Ahmad Khan, Pakistani-Austrian physicist and engineer (b. 1926)
Munir Ahmad Khan (Urdu: منير احمد خان; 20 May 1926 – 22 April 1999), NI, HI, FPAS, was a Pakistani nuclear reactor physicist who is credited, among others, with being the "father of the atomic bomb program" of Pakistan for their leading role in developing their nation's nuclear weapons during the successive years after the war with India in 1971.From 1972 to 1991, Khan served as the chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) who directed and oversaw the completion of the clandestine bomb program from its earliest efforts to develop the atomic weapons to their ultimate nuclear testings in May 1998. His early career was mostly spent in the International Atomic Energy Agency and he used his position to help establish the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Italy and an annual conference on physics in Pakistan. As chair of PAEC, Khan was a proponent of the nuclear arms race with India whose efforts were directed towards concentrated production of reactor-grade to weapon-grade plutonium while remained associated with nation's key national security programs.After retiring from the Atomic Energy Commission in 1991, Khan provided the public advocacy for nuclear power generation as a substitute for hydroelectricity consumption in Pakistan and briefly tenured as the visiting professor of physics at the Institute of Applied Sciences in Islamabad. Throughout his life, Khan was subjected to political ostracization due to his advocacy for averting nuclear proliferation and was rehabilitated when he was honored with the Nishan-i-Imtiaz (Order of Excellence) by the President of Pakistan in 2012— thirteen years after his death in 1999.