Pakistan does not lack scientific heroes; it lacks the institutional memory required to remember them. We repeatedly celebrate borrowed technological achievements while allowing the stories of Pakistanis who actually built laboratories, introduced measurement standards and returned from promising careers abroad to serve their country to disappear behind official walls.
One such story is growing—or once grew prominently—inside the premises of the National Physical and Standards Laboratory in Islamabad: a sapling descended from the original Newton apple tree, presented in recognition of the laboratory’s development and the scientific relationship established between Pakistan’s NPSL and Britain’s National Physical Laboratory.
Behind that tree stands the work of Mr Khalid Islam, the Pakistani scientist who led NPSL from 2003 to 2008, developed its primary measurement capabilities, strengthened its international relationships and helped establish the scientific infrastructure through which Pakistan could maintain trustworthy national standards. He is also my father, and this account preserves a history witnessed, lived and narrated by the man who performed the work.
The Newton sapling was not merely a ceremonial plant. It was an acknowledgement of Pakistani scientific competence.
Khalid Islam and the building of NPSL
Mr Khalid Islam served as Director of the National Physical and Standards Laboratory between 2003 and 2008. As a founding scientist of NPSL, he contributed extensively to developing its primary laboratories and expanding its testing, calibration, standardization, SI-unit realization, training and technical consultancy services.
The laboratory was Pakistan’s National Metrology Institute, carrying a responsibility far greater than its relatively modest public profile suggested. It represented Pakistan within the international measurement community and built the traceability chains through which local measurements could be compared with internationally recognized standards.
Pakistan has been a Member State of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, or BIPM, since 12 July 1973. NPSL, now known internationally as the National Metrology Institute of Pakistan, formed the technical foundation of that participation.
Metrology may sound distant from ordinary life, but it silently governs almost everything a modern country produces. When an electrical meter records voltage, a pharmaceutical laboratory measures chemical quantities, a telecom system depends upon precise frequency, or a Pakistani manufacturer certifies the dimensions of an export product, someone must establish that the underlying measurement is accurate.
That is the world in which Khalid Islam worked: a world where mistakes are measured in fractions invisible to the human eye but capable of influencing entire industries.
| NPSL capability | National importance | Practical Pakistani impact |
|---|---|---|
| Primary measurement standards | Establishes authoritative national references | Ensures measurements remain consistent across Pakistan |
| Instrument calibration | Verifies the accuracy of technical equipment | Reduces industrial errors and improves safety |
| SI-unit traceability | Links local measurements to international units | Strengthens export and laboratory credibility |
| Time and frequency standards | Maintains highly precise timing references | Supports telecommunications, broadcasting and research |
| Testing services | Evaluates products and equipment against standards | Improves consumer protection and manufacturing quality |
| Technical training | Transfers specialist knowledge to industry | Develops Pakistani technical capacity |
| International comparisons | Compares national capabilities with other institutes | Demonstrates Pakistan’s competence globally |
These were not decorative scientific activities. They formed the invisible architecture of an industrial state.
The Pakistani scientist who worked at Britain’s NPL
Long before becoming Director of NPSL, Khalid Islam had worked at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, United Kingdom, as a research scholar pursuing doctoral work involving an ALMS generator—an advanced electronic atomic timekeeping system capable of maintaining accuracy to extraordinarily fine decimal levels.
He earned a prestigious scholarship associated with HRH the Prince of Wales, an opportunity offered to only a handful of students internationally. His work at NPL demanded more than theoretical research. To complete the technical installation, he routed several hundred metres of electronic cabling through the establishment, turning a complex scientific assignment into an operating system.
Britain offered him professional opportunity, including a £25,000 job offer at the time. He could have remained there, completed his doctorate and followed the comfortable route taken by many capable professionals whose home countries fail to create equivalent opportunities.
He chose Pakistan.
Khalid Islam returned before completing his PhD because he wanted to bring the technology and knowledge home. That decision cost him personally, but it gave Pakistan something considerably more important than another expatriate success story: domestic scientific capability.
In 1993, he installed the atomic timekeeping system through which Pakistan strengthened its ability to realize and maintain Pakistan Standard Time domestically instead of depending entirely upon an external reference. Pakistan Standard Time had existed administratively before this installation, but the achievement gave the country a stronger scientific foundation for generating, maintaining and disseminating its own precise time reference.
That distinction matters. A time zone can be declared on paper; maintaining a national time standard requires scientific infrastructure.
