KARACHI: Professor Doctor Attaur Rahman, a former federal minister and chairman of the Higher Education Commission, has compiled the first-ever video book in organic chemistry.
A senior official of the International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), University of Karachi, said Prof Atta along with his associate Syeda Sadia Khatoon compiled this book, Basic Principles of Organic Chemistry: A Compendium of Video Lectures, which is the first video book of its kind.
He said that the video book is arranged in the form of a standard textbook, but instead of having text in each chapter and section, it contains video links to some 300 lectures of leading authorities from MIT, Yale and University of California.
World-famous French Nobel Laureate Prof Jean-Marie Lehn, in his foreword to the video book, said, “What is particularly useful about this effort is that the materials have been carefully screened by the authors to ensure quality, and then organised to cover a broad range of topics.”
“The novel arrangement of the materials in the format of a standard book, with chapters and sections containing the video links within them, should make it particularly attractive to users.”
“This compendium of some 300 lectures should be a useful source of learning for organic chemistry students. It also represents a very valuable effort in line with the evolution of teaching and knowledge transfer methodologies,” Lehn said.
Commenting on his contribution, Prof Atta explained that the single biggest challenge to provide quality education, particularly in the developing world, was the lack of high quality and well qualified faculty.
“This was the first video book of its kind and I hope that it will lead to a new trend that will transform the manner in which education is imparted in class rooms of the future. The video book will be distributed free to all,” he said.
Prof Attaur Rahman is the most decorated scientist of Pakistan, having won four civil awards by successive governments – including the prestigious Nishan-e-Imtiaz.
He has also been conferred the highest civil award of the Government of Austria for his contributions during 2000-2008 to transform the higher education sector of Pakistan.
He is the only scientist in the Muslim world to have been elected as Fellow of Royal Society (London) and to have been awarded the UNESCO Science Prize.
The largest university in Malaysia, Universiti Teknologi Mara, has named a chemistry research institute in his name, the ‘Atta-ur-Rahman Institute of Natural Product Discovery’.
