A. Q. Khan

Long celebrated as the "Father of the Pakistani Bomb", A. Q. Khan is the architect of uranium enrichment gas centrifuge plant built under Khan's leadership, using classified and proprietary plans and technology that he stole from his former employer URENCO, Pakistan would not now have the ability to build dozens of nuclear weapons. He has spent most of the last quarter century as the public face, indeed the very personification, of Pakistan's nuclear establishment. His frequent willingness to make colorful and inflammatory public statements ensured his notoriety and hold on the limelight, up until his surprise forced retirement in March 2001. But much of the credit he has been awarded - and has done nothing to discourage - for being virtually the sole force behind Pakistan's nuclear and missile programs is not deserved.

The hero of Pakistan's nuclear weapons capability was born in present day India, in Bhopal State, in 1936 - the son of a teacher in a family of modest means. For five years, between the 1947 establishment of India as an independent state and 1952, Khan was a citizen of India. Then the Muslim Khan immigrated to Pakistan with his family as did millions of other Muslims before and after the 1947 partition of the two states. After graduating from school in Karachi he went to Europe in 1961 to continue his studies. First in Germany he attended the Technische University of West Berlin, then in Holland where he received a degree in metallurgical engineering at the Technical University of Delft in 1967. Eventually Khan received a Ph.D. in metallurgy from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium in 1972.