Datuk Rahman Anwar Syed

Datuk Rahman Anwar Syed was a Pakistani organic chemist who specialised in natural product chemistry and was a professor of chemistry at the University of Karachi. He studied philosophy at Aligarh Muslim University and later studied chemistry at Frankfurt University, where he received his PhD in 1927. On return to British India, he worked at the Tibbia College Delhi and the Indian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. He later moved to Pakistan and worked in the Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and went on to establish the Pakistan National Science Council and was appointed as its first chairman in 1961. In the same year he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. He later also co-founded Pakistan Academy of Sciences, and after retirement from the government, he founded the Hussain Ebrahim Jamal Research Institute of Chemistry. Siddiqui is credited for pioneering the isolation of unique chemical compounds from the Neem (Azadirachta indica), Rauvolfia, and various other flora. As the founder director of H.E.J. Research Institute of Chemistry, he revolutionised the research on pharmacology of various domestic plants found in South Asia to extract novel chemical substances of medicinal importance. During his career, Siddiqui published more than 300 research papers and obtained 40 patents mainly from the field of natural product chemistry. In addition to his scientific talents, Siddiqui was also an avid painter, a poet, and a great connoisseur of Western music. His paintings were exhibited in the United States, Germany, India, and Pakistan.