Last I remember a decade or so ago his son was now in the industry. Maybe
@farooqbhai or
@Quwa know more. His wife is also a PhD in mathematics if I am not mistaken.
Smart folks.
Brother,
PhD is no guarantee of smartness........this is the biggest problem...people think you have to be smart to do PhD....its not unless you are doing in a very esoteric physics/mathematics field. You just need the grit to pull through the lowly paid 4-5 years of academic work. Sure, there are fields that pay really well once you graduate, but those are for top researchers in top universities and an in demand field.
Companies like Nvidia, Meta, Amazon etc will pay top dollar if you are PhD in autonomous systems/ AI/ML etc, but no one is paying that if you have PhD in Western European Art music (case in point, UChicago culling such PhD programs)
Second is that most of the time PhD students have not had real industrial experience. Real experience means managing budgets and costs. When you are working for a specialized unit like Nuclear weapons development, cost is not an issue because an entire nation has agreed to eat grass and instead fund your nuclear weapons no matter what cost you have to pay on black market to procure nuclear materials, delivery systems, electronics etc.
In real industry, you do a full bankable feasibility reports before you even consider starting a project. Everything is cost related.
Just an example, i work in power generation industry. Helped design, build, commission automation systems for three IPPs in Pakistan over the last decade (2 billion USD project value projects). Someone was selling me his manjan of AI and IoT. I asked him, can this system tell me specifically when something is going to break? Because i can then quantify the loss and hence maybe justify the cost of purchasing that AI/ML analytics product. He couldn't, because in reality no system can, yet.
Companies don't have the luxury of throwing money around like governments can do.
Dr Samar is that kind of guy, who never had account of expenses and costs and return on investment in his mind.
I have utmost respect for all the original Nuclear program pioneers, AQ Khan got a lot of credit, but he wasn't alone. There were hundreds for people making it happen. But Specialized government research and real industrial project work is worlds apart.
This is also why Indian babus and ustad engineers have not delivered any real combat worthy Tejas in over 40 years. Because there is literally no KPI and no career downsides to just kicking the can down the road. Try that in a corporate environment.......and pretty sure you will be booted out