Prof Atta-ur-Rahman has been inducted as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

The announcement came in 19th General Assembly of CAS, and the 14th General Assembly of Chinese Academy of Engineering.The moot was presided over by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Sir Paul Nurse, a Nobel laureate and former president of Royal Society (London) was also inducted as an academician at the same Ceremony.

Prof Atta is the first scientist from the Muslim world to receive this highest honor from China. Prof Atta obtained his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Cambridge University (1968). He has 1,122 publications in several fields of organic chemistry including 764 research publications, 43 international patents, 70 chapters in books and, 245 books published largely by the major US and European presses.

Prof Rahman is the first scientist from the Muslim world to have won the prestigious UNESCO Science Prize (1999) in the 35-year-old history of the Prize. He was elected as Fellow of Royal Society (London) in July 2006. He has been conferred honorary doctorate degrees by many universities including the degree of Doctor of Science (Sc.D.) by  Cambridge University (UK) (1987). He was elected Honorary Life Fellow of Kings College, Cambridge University, the UK in 2007. The Austrian government has honored him with its highest civil award (“Grosse Goldene Ehrenzeischen am Bande”) (2007) in recognition of his eminent contributions.

He is president of Network of Academies of Sciences of Islamic Countries (NASIC), a foreign fellow of Korean Academy of Sciences, and a foreign fellow of the Chinese Chemical Society. He was awarded highest award “Friendship Award of China” on September 28, 2014.

Prof Atta-ur-Rahman was the Federal Minister for Science and Technology (14th March 2000 – 20th November 2002), Federal Minister of Education (2002) and chairman of the Higher Education Commission with the status of a Federal Minister from 2002-2008.

In recognition of his global outstanding services to the development of science and technology, the largest university in Malaysia, University of Technology Mara, Malaysia UiTM, established an institution entitled, “Atta-ur-Rahman Institute of Natural Product Discovery (RiND)” in 2013. He is the most decorated scientist of Pakistan having won four civil awards by the government of Pakistan, including Tamgha-i-Imtiaz (1983), Sitara-i-Imtiaz (1991), Hilal-i-Imtiaz (1998), and the highest national civil award Nishan-i-Imtiaz (2002). — PR