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Mahmoud Hessabi

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Mahmoud Hessabi
Mahmoud Hessabi
Minister of Culture and Higher Education
In office
6 May 1951 – 16 July 1952
Prime MinisterMohammad Mosaddegh
Preceded byKarim Sanjabi
Succeeded byMehdi Azar
Senator from Tehran
In office
22 January 1950 – 9 May 1961
Appointed byMohammad Reza Pahlavi
Personal details
Born(1903-02-23)23 February 1903
Tehran, Qajar Iran
Died3 September 1992(1992-09-03) (aged 89)
Geneva, Switzerland
Resting placeTafresh, Iran
Alma materAmerican University of Beirut, Sorbonne, École Superieure d'Electricité
Occupationscientist

Mahmoud Hessabi (or Hessaby, Persian: محمود حسابی, 23 February 1903 – 3 September 1992) was an Iranian nuclear physicist and senator.[1] He was the minister of education in the cabinet of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh from 1951 to 1952.[2]

Life

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Hessabi was born in Tehran to the family of Abbas and Goharshad Hessabi. His family's hometown is Tafresh, Markazi province, Iran.[3] His family moved to Beirut in 1907 when his father was appointed consul at the Iranian embassy.[4] There Hessabi attended primary school. He was still in secondary school when World War I started prompting the closure of his school and so Hessabi continued his education at home and in 1922, he earned a degree in road engineering from the American University of Beirut. After briefly working for the Ministry of Roads, Beirut, Hessabi travelled to Paris for further education, where he was awarded a degree in electrical engineering at the École Superieure d'Electricité and later a doctorate degree in 1927. In Paris, he worked with Aime Cotton.[5]

In Tehran, Hessabi was affiliated with the University of Tehran and organized the science and engineering faculties of the university. He was the teacher of Alenush Terian while she studied at the university.[6] In June 1951, Hessabi was appointed to a three-man provincial board of the Iranian oil company, the designated successor of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Dr. Hessabi led the nationalisation of the company and became its first CEO. In December 1951, he replaced Karim Sanjaby as minister of education.[1] Between 1961 and 1969, Hessabi was Iran's representative on the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

During the congress honoring "60 Years of Physics in Iran," his services were celebrated, and he was dubbed "the father of modern physics in Iran."

He was Albert Einstein's only Iranian student and friend.

Museum

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In 1992 his house changed to a museum to for recognition of his life. The Mahmoud Hessabi museum is located Tajrish neighbourhood in Tehran.

The Hessabi family is part of Iran's Muslim elite. One of the capital's avenues is named after them, leading to a square with a statue of Dr. Hessabi. Mahmoud Hessabi had a son and a daughter. His son, an engineering graduate, is head of the Dr. Hessabi Institute (2015). Today, the majority of the family lives outside Iran, particularly following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Selected works

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  • Hessaby M. (1947). "Continuous Particles". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 33 (6): 189–194. Bibcode:1947PNAS...33..189H. doi:10.1073/pnas.33.6.189. PMC 1079021. PMID 16588741.
  • Hessaby M. (May 1948). "Theoretical Evidence for the Existence of a Light-Charged Particle of Mass Greater than That of the Electron". Phys. Rev. 73 (9=): 1128. Bibcode:1948PhRv...73.1128H. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.73.1128.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b "Iran Bank Fights Drain on Exchange: Opening of Credit Abroad for Imports Suspended in Step to Protect Currency". The New York Times. New York. 5 December 1951.
  2. ^ Alexander, Yonah; Nanes, Allan S. (1980). The United States and Iran: A Documentary History. Aletheia Books. p. 244. ISBN 9780890933787.
  3. ^ "Iranian Personalities: Professor Mahmoud Hessabi". Iran Chamber Society.
  4. ^ H. E. Chehabi; Hassan I. Mneimneh (2007). "Five Centuries of Lebanese–Iranian Encounters". In H. E. Chehabi (ed.). Distant Relations: Iran and Lebanon in the Last 500 Years. New York: I.B. Tauris. p. 18. ISBN 9781860645617.
  5. ^ Tarikhi, Parviz (2014). The Iranian Space Endeavor: Ambitions and Reality. Springer. p. 47.
  6. ^ Talebian, Mohammad; Talebian, Ehsan (2012). "Alenush Terian: The Iranian Solar Mother". Physics in Perspective. 14 (2): 239–241. Bibcode:2012PhP....14..239T. doi:10.1007/s00016-012-0085-x. S2CID 120601020.
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