Prof. Muhammad Asghar is a French national who was born on 7 June 1936 in Pakistan. He is married with one child.

Dr Asghar was awarded a BSc (1956) and LLB (1960) degrees from the University of Punjab. He obtained his DPhil from the University of Oxford in 1964. The title of his Doctorate thesis was “Investigation of nuclear energy levels using photo neutrons.”

After spending about 3 years at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Nilore (PINSTECH, Pakistan), Harwell (UK), and Saclay (France), Dr Asghar joined the University of Bordeaux (France), as an associate professor (1968-1971).

He worked as a Physicist, Institute Laue-Langevin, Grenoble, France (1971-1978) at CCR Euratom, Ispra, Italy (1978-1980), at CEN, Grenoble, France (1980-1981) and as a Professor of Physics at Houari Boumedeinne University in Algiers, Algeria (1981-1994). Since 1994, he has been at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences at Grenoble, France.

Of the responsibilities he undertook was the supervision and installation of experimental set-ups at the Laue-Langevin Institute (ILL), Grenoble, France, and the establishment of the research programme at the CEA, Algiers, Algeria.

As well as directing the thesis work of about 20 PhD students at the University of Bordeaux, Grenoble and Algiers, Dr Asghar authored about 190 research papers. He is internationally known for his work in the field of nuclear fission. For many years he co-ordinated major experiments on nuclear fission at the high flux nuclear reactor in Grenoble (France) with the participation of several international groups.

He was elected a Fellow of the Islamic Academy of Sciences in 1998.

Prof. Asghar present specific fields of scientific interest are:

1. Low energy nuclear physics; production and study of radioactive nuclei along with radioactive secondary beams;

2. New and safer ways of producing nuclear energy and the treatment of nuclear waste produced by the existing power reactors;

3. Development of new detection systems;

Areas of Research

1. Different aspects of nuclear fission;

2. Nuclear Energy: Critical and sub-critical hybrid nuclear reactors; and

3. Charged particles production with neutrons on stable and radioactive target.

Most Important Published Papers

1. The neutrons cross-sections of Thorium (Th232) and analysis of resonances up to 1 key. M. Asghar, C.M. Chaffay, M.C. Moxon, N.J. Pattenden, E.R. Rae and C.A. Uttley Nuc. Physics (1966) 196.

2. Observation of proton emission following thermal neutron capture in 24.5d 84Rt. G. Andersson, M. Asghar, A. Emsallem, E. Hagberg and B. Jonson, Phys. Lett. 618 No. 3 (1976) 234.

3. Mass and nuclear charge yields for 249 Cf at different fission product kinetic energies. M. Djebara, M. Asghar, J.P. Bocquet, R. Brissot, J. Crancon, Ch. Ristori, E. Aker, D. Engelhardt, B.D. Wilkins, W. Quade and K. Rudolph, Nuc. Phys. A(1989) 346.

4. Unification of binary and LCP fission processes. M. Asghar, B. Bouzid, G. Medkour and M. Djebara, J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part Phys. 22 (1996).

5. The nature of dynamics in the last stages of fission process. B. Bouzid, M. Asghar, M. Djebara, and M. Medkoor, J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys., 24 (1998) 1029.

6. Semi-empirical systematics of cross sections for 14.5 MeV neutrons. M. Belgaid and M. Asghar, Nucl. Instr. And meth B 149 (1999) 383.