Dr Nazeer Ahmed
Member
Adviser, World Organization For Resource Development And Education

Dr. Ahmed is a scientist, historian, inventor, educator and community leader with an international reputation. In each of these areas he has left an imprint which is hard to match.

Education:

Dr. Nazeer Ahmed secured the first rank to the State in the public examination of 1952 winning the Maharaja of Mysore gold medal. He maintained his rank status throughout his academic career and the people of his native Karnataka fondly refer to him as “Rank Nazeer”. His record of academic excellence has seldom been matched and has been a source of inspiration to successive generations of students.

In 1961 he proceeded to the United States as Institute Scholar at the world famous Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratories, California Institute of Technology. He was also the recipient of JRD Tata Endowment scholarship in 1961. He earned his M.S. and Ae.E. degrees in Aeronautics from Caltech. In 1967 he obtained his PhD in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University and in 1975 a MBA degree from Rider University. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in the State of California.

To pass on his insights into educational excellence, Dr. Ahmed has recently founded a corporation RankStudent.com. It provides software to deserving students especially from the less fortunate sections of society in India so that they become competitive in the world economy. He travels extensively around the globe lecturing on science and civilization and is currently visiting Bangalore and tour schools in Karnataka to help students achieve excellence in their school work.

Scientific Achievements:

Dr. Ahmed has worked on a large number of projects that have shaped the modern world. In 1964 he was responsible for analyzing the vibrations of Apollo, Saturn and Lunar Land Rover vehicles. In 1968 he developed a method of making fiber optics. His work on advanced composites earned him an invitation from the International Academy of High Pressure Physics to give the key note lecture on this subject at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado.

The crowning achievement of Dr. Ahmed was his work on the Hubble Space Telescope. During 1979-82, he provided leadership for the development of Secondary Mirror Assembly of the Hubble which delivered diffraction limited performance at 1/700th the wavelength of light in the visible. Thanks to this work and the contributions of other scientists, the Hubble can look at the very edge of the known galaxy and acquire stars of magnitude 8. The pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope have provided insights into the very beginnings of the universe and have inspired people all over the world.

Dr. Ahmed has earned 12 United States patents on space based work. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Applied Physics, Journal of Applied Mechanics, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Journal of Basic Engineering and other journals.

Scholarly work:

Dr. Nazeer Ahmed has written several books. He is the author of Encyclopedia of Islamic History (www.historyofislam.com) which is a compendium of 10 books on the contribution of Islam to world civilization. The distinguishing characteristic of his work is that he looks upon history as a Sign from the Heavens so that humankind may learn from it and use its lessons to improve human society. Commenting on his work, Professor Niaz Irfan of Lahore wrote, “Dr. Nazeer Ahmed’s work should be compared to that Ibn Khaldun….Dr. Ahmed has advanced his own theory the rise and fall of civilizations based on renewal….” The work has earned wide acclaim in the United States and around the world.

Perhaps the crowning achievement of Dr. Ahmed is a translation of the Qur’an from Arabic into easy to read, modern American English. By this work, he has earned a place among a chosen few who have ever attempted this monumental work and have successfully completed it. He is one of a handful of people from the Subcontinent who has successfully this distinction. The translation has been read by more than 360,000 people around the world from the United States to Zanzibar.

Community Service in India:

Despite his success as a scientist and historian, Dr. Ahmed did not forget the land of his birth. He established a scholarship fund through which he has helped thousands of poor students of all religions and castes. He has built mosques, Eiddgahs and has donated millions to build community infrastructure. The unique Eiddgah built by him in Tumkur reflects a fusion of traditional designs with the dynamism of a modern, resurgent India. Here is what the Wikipedia has to say about this Eiddgah:

This Eidgah is unique and combines traditional themes with the modern. Designed and built by Dr. Nazeer Ahmed, a space scientist, it has built into it subtleties that go beyond the ordinary. First, the divine name “Allah” is built into the structure, read right to left as is its reflection, read left to right. The reflection suggests the world is illusory and is only a reflection of the heavens. Secondly, each of the smaller minarets is nineteen feet from the ground. The number nineteen is a mystical number in Islam that appears in the Qur’an. The intermediate sized minarets are nineteen feet from the base. So, altogether there are six minarets that are nineteen feet each. Six times nineteen is 114, which is the total number of Surahs in the Qur’an, a Book that completes God’s favors upon humankind. Straight lines drawn from the apex of the minarets intersect where the word “Hu” is inscribed in a red circle. The subtended angle of 112.4 degrees is twice the natural flow angle of the earth into which we return. This flow angle is a solution to a Legendre polynomial of the second order which was presented in a paper by Dr. Ahmed at the fourth National Congress of Applied Mechanics at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. USA in 1972. “Hu” is the abstract divine pronoun for God, most exalted. The circle is a reminder of “two bows length or less” wrapped around that shrouded prophet Muhammed when he stood in divine presence during Me’raj. The entire structure is enclosed in a “golden rectangle” where the ratio of the width of the base to the height of the two large minarets is 1.618. The Eidgah complex accommodates 12,000 worshippers.

In spite of all his achievements, Dr. Ahmed remains a very humble man. He was born into a spiritual family of modest means in Tumkur, Karnataka, India in 1939 when Mysore was a kingdom in British India. He still remembers that he and his classmates in primary school sat on the cold, dirt floor in a little school next to a mosque and learned to read and write on a slate. “We had one thing going for us”. he says, “We had deep respect for our teachers and they loved us”. That love pervades all of the works of this remarkable man.

Current positions:

Dr. Ahmed is an adviser to the World Organization for Resource Development and Education in Washington, DC. He is the Chairman of the Delixus group of companies in the U.S. and India. He is also the Director of the American Institute of Islamic History and Culture based in California.