اِنَّا لِلّٰہِ وَاِنَّآ اِلَیْہِ رَاجِعُوْنَ
Dr. Altamash Kamal is no longer with us. An MIT PhD, entrepreneur, net-neutrality advocate, satellite, web, and e-commerce pioneer in Pakistan, and the founder of many startups including Xibercom, Wavetech, Spider Magazine, desistore, Dr. Kamal had a profound impact on many lives he touched – including mine.
Dr. Kamal, whom most of his colleagues called AK, or simply doctor sahab, was a genius in the true sense of the word. He despised rote learning and encouraged intellectual discourse. Whenever I read Feynman's saying:
I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding; they learn by some other way - by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!
it always reminds me of Pakistan's Feynman, Dr. Altamash Kamal. He did great things which would be deemed impossible by a weaker person -- building and sustaining successful startups in Pakistan.
There are so many anecdotes -- as a 9 year old who has just completed a GW BASIC programming course in late 80's, I was quite proud of myself. In the early days of Wavetech, one weekend I tagged along with my dad who was working with AK on some sorta Keplerian orbital problem which was causing signal issues. Dr. Altamash as usual was working with a pile of books by his side in a huge office full of MC Escher's drawings, peelu, and fractals, his mathematical passion. Then he just asked me out of the blue:
So, do you think computer is a brain, or a machine?
I was surprised, and to my naivete, I blurted out, "A brain of course!" --- echoing the CPU is the brain of computer manta.
Doctor sahab laughed -- he had an amazing way of putting people at ease. Then he explained to my why computer is just a machine, and started explaining the architecture von neumann architecture in the simplest terms possible. He was brilliant, an amazing mentor with a unbridled passion for learning and teaching.
Dr. Altamash was a nuclear scientist from MIT by training -- his dissertation on The selective use of thorium and heterogeneity in uranium-efficient pressurized water reactors is well cited but instead he chose to work in many different sectors. He instilled the love of learning, technology, and exploration in many people including myself. I thoroughly enjoyed his Feynman’ish reprimands as a teenager doing internship in many companies he founded, and learn from his wisdom and brilliance. Fractals, Escher, geocentric satellites, azimuth and elevations to configure dishes, circuits, PCBs and neural nets– he was a sea of knowledge and wisdom, full of energy and zeal; a person of amazing talents.
A renaissance man is no more. End of an era – I miss him dearly.
سب کہاں کچھ لالہ و گل میں نمایاں ہو گئیں.
خاک میں کیا صورتیں ہوں گی کہ پنہاں ہو گئیں
