Mujaddid Ahmed Ijaz

Mujaddid Ijaz joined the faculty of the Virginia Tech Physics department in September 1964 as an Assistant Professor of Physics.[15] In his early years as a faculty member, Ijaz devoted much of his time to his teaching responsibilities,[16] 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 laboratory.[17] Ijaz's early experimental results earned him an appointment as research collaborator at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories in 1966 under a University Isotope Separator at Oak Ridge (UNISOR) grant funded by the U.S. Energy Department.[1]

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, and Nobel physics laureates Hans Bethe, Robert Hofstadter, Eugene Wigner and Richard Feynman. Noted Chinese physicist Luke W. Mo (whose group at the Stanford Linear Accelerator had won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1990) also lectured at Virginia Tech.[18]

Ijaz attained the rank of Full Professor of Physics in 1977,[19] 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[20] and another at I.C.T.P. in 1985, he continued his teaching duties[21] 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,[22] religion and science[23] and other aspects of physics that did not form part of his technical research in earlier years.[24] 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.[25]

Ijaz (left) with Munir Khan & Abdus Salam (right), Nathiagali Physics Conference, 1976

Mujaddid Ijaz began his research work at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ORNL) in 1966 under Virginia Tech funding contributed to the UNISOR program.[1] 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, of which Virginia Tech was one. Ijaz's research focused on the discovery of new isotopes using ORNL's High Flux Isotope Reactor.[26] The reactor was built in 1965 with the highest neutron flux 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 isotopes of Erbium, Ytterbium,[27] Thulium,[28] Osmium,[29][30] Hafnium,[31] Tungsten,[32] Mercury, Titanium,[33][34][35][36][37] and Lead.[38] In December 1982, physicists at the University of Arizona 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.[39]

During the 1970s, Ijaz participated[4] in the Atoms for Peace initiative created by President Eisenhower in 1953 to help the post-World War II international community cope with nuclear power.[40] Pakistan's first facility, a 5 MW PARR-I pool-type facility, was provided by the United States in 1965.[41] The reactor began operations on December 21, 1965 under the supervision of Pakistani scientists led by Abdus Salam.[42]

Mujaddid Ijaz collaborated with notable physicists and mathematicians throughout his 27-year career. Most notable among these were his collaborations with Abdus Salam[43] whose groundbreaking work in electroweak interactions together with American physicists Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow 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. 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.[44] Ijaz participated in these conferences several times during the mid-1970s under National Science Foundation grants.[45] He was also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Physical Society.[1]