Muhammad Akhtar

Muhammad Akhtar was one of the most influential enzyme biochemists of the twentieth century, a scientist whose patient, meticulous experiments helped reveal how living cells carry out some of their most delicate chemical transformations. Born in 1933 in Mianwali, in the Punjab region of what was then British India and is now Pakistan, he rose from modest beginnings in a small provincial town to become a Fellow of the Royal Society and a teacher whose influence rippled across continents. His life is a quiet testament to the power of disciplined inquiry, and to the idea that the slow, careful pursuit of truth can illuminate the very machinery of life.

Akhtar grew up at a time of enormous upheaval. He was a teenager when the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947 and Pakistan came into being, a period that disrupted countless lives and reshaped the futures of an entire generation. Against this backdrop he pursued his early education with determination, drawn to chemistry by its promise of precise, demonstrable answers. He completed his undergraduate and master's studies in Pakistan, where a gifted student of the sciences could find encouragement even amid scarce resources. Like many of the most promising young scientists of newly independent nations, he set his sights on advanced training abroad, and in the 1950s he travelled to the United Kingdom to pursue doctoral research.

It was in Britain that Akhtar found the intellectual home in which he would spend most of his career. He earned his PhD at Imperial College London, immersing himself in organic chemistry and the emerging discipline of biochemistry, which sought to explain biology in the language of molecules. The mid-twentieth century was a golden age for this field: the structure of DNA had just been described, the genetic code was being deciphered, and the mechanisms of enzymes — the protein catalysts that make life's chemistry possible — were a frontier ripe for exploration. Akhtar threw himself into this frontier, developing a lasting fascination with how enzymes manipulate molecules atom by atom.

In 1963 he joined the University of Southampton, an institution with which his name would become permanently linked. There he built a distinguished research group and, over the following decades, rose to become Professor of Biochemistry and a leading figure in British science. Southampton gave him the freedom to pursue long-term questions, and he repaid that trust with discoveries that would appear in textbooks for generations. He approached each problem with a combination of chemical intuition and experimental rigour, often using isotopic labelling — the technique of tagging specific atoms within a molecule so that their fate can be traced through a reaction — to expose the precise steps by which enzymes do their work.

Much of Akhtar's most celebrated research concerned the biochemistry of steroids and the enzymes that build and transform them. Steroids are a family of molecules that includes cholesterol and the sex hormones, and the body assembles them through long chains of enzymatic reactions of remarkable subtlety. Akhtar devoted years to understanding aromatase, the enzyme that converts androgens into oestrogens, a transformation central to human reproductive biology and, as later medicine would show, deeply relevant to the treatment of hormone-dependent cancers. His detailed mechanistic studies helped clarify how this enzyme removes a carbon atom and reshapes the steroid ring, work that contributed to the broader understanding on which modern hormone-targeting drugs would be built.

Beyond steroids, Akhtar made important contributions to the chemistry of vitamin B6-dependent enzymes, to the biosynthesis of the porphyrin ring that lies at the heart of haemoglobin and chlorophyll, and to the study of how light-sensitive molecules in the eye underpin vision. In each case his signature was the same: an insistence on understanding not merely what an enzyme does, but exactly how it does it, down to the movement of individual atoms and the geometry of the transition state. This mechanistic philosophy — that biology is ultimately chemistry, and that chemistry can be known with precision — defined his entire scientific outlook.

In his later career Akhtar embraced the techniques of molecular biology and protein engineering, recognising that the ability to clone genes and produce enzymes in large quantities would transform the study of catalysis. He combined classical chemical methods with these newer tools, mentoring a generation of students in an integrated way of thinking that bridged organic chemistry, biochemistry, and the genetics of proteins. His openness to new methods, even as an established figure, reflected a humility and curiosity that colleagues consistently remarked upon.

Akhtar's achievements were recognised at the highest levels of British science. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1979, one of the most prestigious honours available to any scientist working in the United Kingdom, and his standing as a teacher and researcher earned him admiration far beyond his own laboratory. Yet he never forgot the land of his birth. He maintained deep ties with Pakistan throughout his life and played an important role in nurturing biochemistry there, helping to support and inspire scientific institutions and serving as a bridge between the research cultures of Britain and South Asia. For many Pakistani scientists he became a model of what was possible: a boy from Mianwali who had reached the summit of international science without severing his roots.

Those who worked with Akhtar described a man of exacting standards but genuine warmth, a mentor who expected rigour because he believed his students were capable of it. He understood that great science is rarely the product of a single dramatic flash and far more often the fruit of patient, repeated, carefully controlled experiment. He taught by example, demonstrating that the willingness to do one more control, to check one more possibility, to refuse a comfortable conclusion until the evidence demanded it, is what separates lasting discovery from passing fashion.

Muhammad Akhtar continued to think, write, and engage with science late into his life. He died in 2023, having lived through nine decades that spanned the birth of his nation, the molecular revolution in biology, and the rise of the biotechnology age he had helped to make possible. He leaves behind a body of work woven into the foundations of enzymology, a lineage of students who carry his methods forward, and an example of a life devoted to understanding the hidden chemistry of living things.

His story carries a quiet but powerful lesson. It reminds us that the pursuit of knowledge knows no border of birthplace or circumstance, and that a mind disciplined by patience and honesty can unlock secrets that benefit all of humanity. In the careful tracing of a single atom through a single enzyme, Akhtar found a way to honour the intricate order of creation — and in doing so he embodied the conviction, shared by so many great Muslim scientists before him, that to study the natural world with humility and care is itself a noble and elevating endeavour.