PROFESSOR GRAHAM HIGMAN IN PAKISTAN

Pak Math Soc Newsl, 1, 6, 2007

In July 1987, Professor Qaiser Mushtaq organized a unique mini conference on algebra, the first such international activity in algebra in the history of Pakistan.

Professor Graham Higman FRS, former Waynflete Professor of Pure Mathematics at Oxford University and former President of the London Mathematical Society, was invited to deliver lectures at the conference. The conference was attended by mathematicians from all over Pakistan and was sponsored by the National Academy of Higher Education, (University Grants Commission) and the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. Professor Graham Higman FRS delivered four one-hour lectures. Experts and senior students from all over the country attended the conference.

Professor Higman flew to Pakistan from Singapore where he had attended an international conference on Group Theory in June 1987 where many eminent group theorists also attended, and Professor Higman who was one of the keynote speakers. Professors Mario Suzuki and J.P.Serre and many other such mathematical giants  were amongst his audience. His lecture was as usual rich with outstanding mathematical substance. In his typical scholarly style, he won  hearts of the audience. He received several questions which he candidly answered.

I had the honour to be a doctoral student of Professor Graham Higman with whom I spent three years at Oxford from 1980 to 1983. When Professor Higman retired from Oxford in 1984, an international conference was held in his honour. I had returned to Islamabad by then working as a lecturer in mathematics at Quaid-i-Azam University. Surmounting several obstacles created by the University Grants Commission, Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance, I finally obtain the travel grant and the No Objection Certificate to proceed abroad to attend the conference held in Professor Higman’s honour.

That was my first meeting with Professor Graham Higman after having returned from Oxford obtaining D.Phil. from there by writing a thesis on Coset Diagrams for the Modular Group. Coset diagrams are visible in the background of Professor Higman’s portrait, by Norman Blamey, which was displayed in the Higman Seminar Hall in the Mathematical Institute, 24-29 St Giles, at Oxford.

My next meeting with Professor Higman was at a conference three years later in Singapore in 1987 where I went to read a paper. I remained in Singapore after the conference and had the opportunity to have several meetings with him. Professor Higman had returned from Illinois at Urbana Champagne where he spent about two years. He was now on his way home to Headington in England, and I requested him to spend some time in Islamabad before returning to Oxfordshire. Luckily, he agreed.

Professor Higman spent some three weeks in Pakistan. I organized a four-day conference at the Mathematics Department, Quaid-i-Azam University. The mini-conference attracted a handsome number of participants from all over the country. Professor M.Rauf Qureshi, Professor Asif Kazi, Professor Karamat Hassan Dar, and Professor Khuda Dino Soomro were amongst them.

At the end of the conference, Professor Higman and the participants were brought to Murree Hills for recreation.

During his visit to Pakistan, Professor Higman was requested by the Pakistan Television (PTV) for an interview in the then popular programme, Visitor’s Book. I was asked to interview him. The interview lasted for about twenty minutes. For several days afterwards, I kept receiving comments, messages, and questions for Professor Higman.

Professor Higman is famous for his difficult and breakthrough results in mathematics. His work on the famous “Embedding Theorems, Hignam-Neumann-Neumann Extensions, and Finite Simple Groups are a few examples.

After the conference, Professor Higman wanted to take respite from mathematics for a while and spend some time on his own watching birds in some remote area. I therefore arranged a trip for him to Gilgit. He asked my wife and I to accompany him, but I preferred to do otherwise. . He spent about ten days in Gilgit, and returned to Islamabad by road due to uncertainty of the weather. The journey took around 18 hours, and when he eventually arrived at my place, he looked very tired. I took him straight to Hotel Margala for an overnight stay. Next day, in the evening we had the interview at the PTV on 16^th August 1987. I enjoy recalling his comments at the end of the interview: 

"We do fundamental research, not only to acquire results solely but because the process is an ennobling one; it is one that makes you more worthwhile than before; it is something that if  you cut yourself off, you are making yourself less human than you ought to be."