Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry

Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry () FPAS HI, NI, SI, Skdt (1 July 1903 – 4 December 1988) best known as R. M. Chaudhry, was a Pakistani nuclear physicist and a professor of particle physics at the Government College University. His teaching and instructions on modern physics influenced many of his student to pursue career in physics who regard him as one of the key architects of having been the pioneer of experimental nuclear physics research in Pakistan and, along with Abdus Salam and Ishrat Hussain Usmani, one of the main creators of Pakistan's nuclear weapons research program in the 1970s. Chaudhry, who served as professor of nuclear physics at Government College University, was later referred to by Dr. Samar Mubarakmand, one of his students, as "the true father of the nuclear weapons program of Pakistan". Chaudhry was born in 1903 to a middle-class Rajput family (Rao) in Kahnaur, a small village in Rohtak district of Eastern Punjab. He passed the university entrance exam with highest marks and earned a scholarship awarded by the Viceroy Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading. He used the scholarship to enroll as a student of chemical engineering at Aligarh University in 1923, but after taking an engineering physics course, he decided to change his focus to thermodynamics and multivariable calculus. He was successful as a physics student, earning the respect of his peers and professors. In 1927, Chaudhry took his BSc in Experimental physics, followed by his 1929 MSc in physics with First Class Honours. The same year, Chaudhry gained attention from Hamidullah Khan, the Nawab of Bhopal of princely state of Bhopal, who awarded him a science scholarship for higher studies. Under that scholarship, Chaudhry travelled to United Kingdom to study for his doctoral degree. Chaudhry joined the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. At Cambridge, Chaudhry studied Calculus of mathematical Integrals, and learned Tensor calculus, quantum physics, and general relativity under Nobel laureate in Chemistry Ernest Rutherford.