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Atta-ur-Rahman (; born 22 September 1942), PhD, FRS, FPAS, is a Pakistani scientist specialising in organic chemistry who served as the Chairman of the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan between October 2002 till September 2008 and the Minister for Science and Technology between March 2000 and September 2002. He currently serves as the Chair of the UN Committee on Science and Technology.
After studying chemistry at the University of Karachi, Atta-ur-Rahman travelled to Cambridge where he received Ph.D and later Sc.D. in organic chemistry. He also has received honorary doctorates from University of Bradford and Asian Institute of Technology, with research focused on Bio-organic chemistry, Synthetic chemistry and Natural product chemistry. He started teaching as an associate professor in 1974 at the University of Karachi and worked as postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tübingen as part of the German Academic Exchange. He serves as the patron of Ebrahim Jamal Research Institute of Chemistry and professor emeritus of Chemistry at the Karachi University.
Atta-ur-Rahman is an academician in the field of natural product chemistry in South Asia, with over 1030 scientific publications in the field of Organic chemistry, 37 patents, and numerous books written, edited, published, or circulated by him over the world. He serves as the Editor In Chief of several peer reviewed journals including the Current Medicinal Chemistry and the Natural Product Research. He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society since July 2006 and has served as the President of Pakistan Academy of Sciences. In recognition of his contributions in the field of organic chemistry, he has been conferred with four Government of Pakistan civil awards including Nishan-e-Imtiaz (2002), Hilal-i-Imtiaz (1998), Sitara-i-Imtiaz (1991) and Tamgha-e-Imtiaz (1983). He was the first recipient of the Khwarizmi International Award and the first Muslim to receive the UNESCO Science Prize (1999). He is now Co-Chairman of United Nations Committee on Science, Technology and Innovation for the UNESCAP region.http://www.dawn.com/news/1244056