Asghar Qadir (Urdu: 23 ; July 1946), HI, SI, FPAS, is a Pakistani mathematician and a

prominent cosmologist, specialised in mathematical physics and physical cosmology. He is

considered as one of the top mathematicians in Pakistan. He is the Chairman of the
Mathematics Department, and the director of School of Natural Sciences (SNS) at the National
University of Sciences and Technology (NUST).

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. What sparked the interest in mathematics?
2. What is the philosophy of science? Does it aim at telling the truth? Can it
reach the ultimate truth? Is there such a thing as religious knowledge or
secular knowledge, or is that discrimination a fabrication of the human
mind? Is there a finite thought-process at the end of which lies the
mathematic proof of God? Proof of God is an intuitive process, and lies in the
fitrat of man. We can argue in its favor, we can rationalize it, but can we hope
at demonstrating it with pen and paper?
3. Tell us about the Zenos paradox of Achilles and a tortoise, in which if tortoise
has a head start, Achilles should, despite having a higher speed, never be
able to catch up with it!
a. Can an infinite process end? And how can it, if infinity does not have a
last step?
4. I am a religious person, and I believe in the concept of an eternal hell for
irredeemable sins. How can you rationalize an eternal hell for sinning for a
finite number of time, logically? Or is it that other variables are involved, such
as denial to God being a sin of an infinite magnitude?
5. Mathematics and art are related in many different ways. History has shown
artists to use mathematics as a tool in beautifying art and giving more
meaning to it. The Golden Ratio is said to be aesthetically pleasing, and has
been used in art and architecture, and we can observe it in Mona Lisa. In
Islamic art, symmetry was used in the Persian Girih tile works. But what I
specifically want to talk about is Squaring the Circle, and I want to ask you
exactly why it is impossible, and how Da Vincis Vitruvian Man metaphorically
solves the riddle of the impossible task of squaring the circle, by placing a
man at the center of a circle as well as a square, and representing mankind
as the area of both the square and the circle. Because man can fill the
irreconcilable areas of both the circle and the square.
6. It often happens that someone out of sheer creativity and logic will introduce
a mathematical concept with no physical reality whatsoever, and then a
century or two later, we will find its application in nature. For example,
Reimann developed a type of non-Euclidean geometry in the 19 th century,
and his concept of multidimensional space, or the Reimannian space, was
used a century later when Einstein was formulating the general theory of
relativity and realized that space-time is curved. Fibonacci sequence, that
Fibonnaci stumbled upon while looking at the idealized growth of rabbit
population, and then we found the Fibonacci sequence everywhere.
My question here is is mathematics invented, or discovered? Is math the
word of God, the native language of the universe, or is it some tool that we
have invented to understand the universe around us, and it has no existence
outside mankinds conscious thought?
7. If there is a number of trees in a forest, and there is no one to count them,
does that number exist? Interlinking mathematics strongly with
consciousness.
a. We created everything with definite measure.
8. One of the most difficult concepts to understand and mathematically is that
of turbulence in fluids. Heisenberg in fact said, When I meet God, I am going
to ask Him about two things. Why relativity, and why turbulence, and I really
believe He will have the answer to the first one. And we see it very
accurately painted in Van Goghs Starry Night, in which he draws the night
sky filled with swirling clouds and eddies of stars. In 2004, using the Hubble
Telescope, scientists saw the eddies of a dust cloud around the star and it
reminded them of Van Goghs Starry Night. So could you please explain
turbulence to us a little bit so we can appreciate Van Gogh a little more.
9. Betrand Russel expressed his sense of mathematic beauty in these terms:
10. Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty a beauty cold
and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without
the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern
perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the
sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be
found in mathematics as surely as poetry
And mathematicians are known to derive immense aesthetic pleasure from
their work. What is the part of math that you find very, very beautiful.