Munir Ahmad Khan - Legacy

Legacy

When Abdus Salam was ejected from his position in 1974, Khan symbolised of many scientists thinking they could control how other peers would use their research. During the timeline of atomic bomb project, Khan was seen as a symbol of both moral responsibility of scientists, and to the contribution to the rise of Pakistan's science while preventing the politicisation of the project. Popular depiction of Khan's views on nuclear proliferation as a confrontation between right-wing militarists (symbolised by Abdul Qadeer Khan) and left-wing intellectuals (symbolised by Khan) over the moral question of weapons of mass destruction. Babar portrayed Khan as "tragic fate but consciously genius", and also dubbed him as "Nuclear Sage" of Pakistan. In 1999, Khan staunchly the backed his country's nuclear technology project, as he puts it:

The genius of Pakistan (since its establishment in 1947) is her science and her scientists and engineers. Mixing science with politics is very, very dangerous. This will contaminate the politics which is never clean, with radioactivity, and it will destroy the science as we witnessed in Germany in 1940s when their atomic bomb project was politicised for political gain. Without a comprehensive policy, things do not work, and no country can go developed its nuclear project without having some kind of framework in which to operate. We had to develop a political strategy to launch our project without arousing great deal of suspicion and opposition at the international level, because no body in the world wanted to see Pakistan to became nuclear power. But we had no choice . I can tell you...... that it is not only the Western countries; we were wronged by some of the countries who we regard as our friends. It is not because the people in those countries oppose this project, but the government’s felt, the rulers felt that Pakistan would become too strong. —Munir Ahmad Khan,

As a scientist, Khan is remembered by his peers as brilliant researcher and engaging teacher, the founder of nuclear engineering in Pakistan. In spite of his academic discipline, Khan had diverse interests in nuclear physics and theoretical physics where he researched and worked under his mentor Abdus Salam on many problems arising theoretical physics and the nuclear engineering. An award, Munir Ahmad Khan Gold Medal, is named after him at Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences; and a memorial was established in 2001 at National Center for Physics. After years of urging of many of Khan's colleagues and his powerful political friends who had ascended to power in the government, President Asif Ali Zardari bestowed and awarded Khan the prestigious and highest civilian state award, Nishan-e-Imtiaz in 2012 as a gesture of political rehabilitation.

As military and public policy maker, Khan was a technocrat leader in a shift between science and military, and the emergence of the concept of the big science in Pakistan. During the Cold war, scientists became involved in military research on unprecedented degree, because of the threat communism and Indian integration posed to Pakistan, scientists volunteered in great numbers both for technological and organizational assistance to Pakistan's efforts that resulted in powerful tools such as laser rangefinder, the proximity fuse and operations research. As a cultured, intellectual, nuclear engineer who became a disciplined military organiser, Khan represented the shift away from the idea that scientists had their "head in the clouds" and that knowledge on such previously esoteric subjects as the composition of the atomic nucleus had no "real-world" applications .