Members

The Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN) has over one hundred members from eighteen countries across Asia and the Pacific, consisting of former political, diplomatic and military leaders, senior government officials, and scholars and opinion leaders. APLN aims to inform and energize public opinion, especially high-level policymakers, to take seriously the very real threats posed by nuclear weapons, and to do everything possible to achieve a world in which they are contained, diminished and eventually eliminated.

Pervez HOODBHOY

Pervez HOODBHOY

Distinguished Professor of Physics and Mathematics formerly at Forman Christian College University, Lahore

Pervez Hoodbhoy was a member of the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament (2013-2018) and taught at the Quaid-e-Azam University physics department for 40 years.

Pervez Hoodbhoy is a Pakistani nuclear physicist, essayist and national security analyst who lives in Islamabad. He taught at the Quaid-e-Azam University physics department for 40 years before becoming a distinguished professor of Physics and Mathematics at Forman Christian College University in Lahore.

Dr. Hoodbhoy graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with undergraduate degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics, a master's in solid state physics, and a PhD degree in nuclear physics. He has held visiting professorships at MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Maryland and in 2003 was invited to the Pugwash Council for a 6-year stay. He is a sponsor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and a member of the Permanent Monitoring Panel on Terrorism of the World Federation of Scientists.

Among the awards he has won include the IERE Baker Award for Electronics (1968); the Abdus Salam Prize for Mathematics (1984); the UNESCO Kalinga Prize for the popularization of science (2003); the Joseph A. Burton Award (2010) from the American Physical Society and the Jean Meyer Award from Tufts University. In 2011, he was included in the list of 100 most influential global thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine. From 2013-2018, he was made a member of the UN Secretary General's Advisory Board on Disarmament.

Dr. Hoodbhoy is the author of Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, now in eight languages. His latest book is Pakistan: Origins, Identity, and Future. He created and anchored a series of TV programmes on Pakistan's education system and two other series that aimed at bringing scientific concepts to ordinary members of the public. As the head of Mashal Books in Lahore, he leads a major translation effort to produce books in Urdu that promote modern thought, human rights, and emancipation of women.