Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood

Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood (Urdu: سلطان بشیر الدین محمود; b. 1940) is a Pakistani nuclear engineer, designated terrorist and a scholar of Islamic studies.

Having spent a distinguished career in the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), he founded the Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN) in 1999 – a right-wing organisation that was banned and sanctioned by the United States in 2001. He was the subject of a criminal investigation launched by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) over unauthorized travel in Afghanistan prior to the September 11 attacks in 2001. Mahmood was among those who were listed and sanctioned by the Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee in December 2001. He was also sanctioned as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the United States' Office of Foreign Assets Control, with an address lisiting of the Al-Qaeda Wazir Akbar Khan safe house, Kabul.

He has since been living in anonymity in Islamabad, authoring books on the relationship between Islam and science.

Mahmood was born in Amritsar, Punjab, British India to a Punjabi Muslim family. There are conflicting reports concerning his date of birth; his personal admission noted the birth year as 1940, while the UN reports estimated it as 1938. His father, Chaudhry Muhammad Sharif Khan, was a local zamindar (lit. feudal lord). His family emigrated from India to Pakistan following religious violence during the partition of India in 1947; the family settled in Lahore, Punjab. His son Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry serves as the 22nd Director-General of Inter-Services Public Relations of the Pakistan Armed Forces.

After graduating with distinctions from a local high school standing at top of his class, Mahmood was awarded a scholarship and enrolled at the Government College University to study electrical engineering. After spending a semester, he transferred to the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science with honours in 1960. His credentials led him to join the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) where he gained another scholarship to study in the United Kingdom.

In 1962, Mahmood went to attend the University of Manchester where he studied for a double master's degree. First completing a masters' programme in control systems in 1965, he then received another master's degree in nuclear engineering in 1969 from the University of Manchester. While in Manchester, Mahmood was an expert on the Manhattan Project and was reportedly in contact with South African scientists in discussing the jet-nozzle method for uranium enrichment. However, it remains unclear how much interaction was taken place during that time.

Mahmood joined the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) in 1968, joining the Nuclear Physics Division at the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (PINSTECH) working under Dr. Naeem Ahmad Khan. His collaboration took place with Samar Mubarakmand, Hafeez Qureshi, and he was a vital member of the group before it was discontinued in 1970. Mahmood was one of the foremost experts on civilian reactor technology and was a senior engineer at the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP I)— the first commercial nuclear power plant in Pakistan. He gained notability and publicity in the Pakistan Physics Society for inventing a scientific instrument, the 'SBM probe', to detect leaks in steam pipes, a problem that was affecting nuclear plants all over the world and is still used worldwide.

After witnessing the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, which saw the unconditional surrender of Pakistan in 1971, Mahmood attended the winter seminar at Multan and delivered a speech on atomic science. On 20 January 1972, the President of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, approved a crash atomic weapon programme, under Munir Ahmad Khan, for the sake of "national survival." Nevertheless, Mahmood continued his work at the KANUPP I engineering division.