Tasneem Zehra Husain

Tasneem Zehra Husain is a Pakistani theoretical physicist and writer, recognised as the first Pakistani woman to work in string theory. She is a founding faculty member of the physics department at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), and the author of the novel Only the Longest Threads (2014). ¹

She was born in Lahore; the sources consulted give no birth date for her, and the museum records none. She received her early education in Lahore, studied at Kinnaird College and took her master's degree at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, then a diploma at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste. She completed her PhD in string theory at Stockholm University in 2003, under Ansar Fayyazuddin; the English article notes that she finished it at the age of twenty-six. ^{1 2}

After her doctorate she held a postdoctoral position at Harvard University, and then returned to Pakistan as a founding member of the physics faculty at LUMS. She has represented Pakistan at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings and led the Pakistani team at the World Year of Physics launch conference in Paris, and she speaks regularly at schools and colleges in Pakistan in support of science education. She also writes a column for 3 Quarks Daily. ¹

Her novel Only the Longest Threads was published in November 2014. Told through the lives of physicists across several eras, it presents the matter of theoretical physics and the passion of those who practise it; Kirkus Reviews described it as capturing both. She has said the book grew out of wanting to show the human side of the science she works in. ¹

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