Jafar Dhia Jafar (; born in Baghdad on August 25, 1942) is an Iraqi nuclear physicist, former Vice Chairman of the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission, and chief of Iraq's nuclear program. He is widely known by American and international officials including UN Chief Inspector David Kay (1991-1992) as the father of the Iraqi Nuclear Program.
Early life
Jafar is the second son of Dhia Jafar who was an Iraqi mechanical engineer with degrees from the University of Birmingham B.Sc.(1934) and Ph.D.(1936). The elder Jafar worked in the Iraqi Railways, becoming its Director-General in 1946. Thereafter, he held many cabinet posts during the Kingdom of Iraq (1921–1958) that was overthrown by a military coup on July 14, 1958. Jafar Dhia Jafar completed primary education at a private school in Baghdad in June 1953, then went to Baghdad College (BC), a school established in 1932 by American Jesuits in association with Boston College. After completing intermediate education at BC in June 1956, Jafar Dhia Jafar traveled to England in July 1956, accompanied by his elder brother Yahya (DOB May 9, 1941) and enrolled at Seaford College, a boys boarding school in Sussex in September 1956. He showed interest in mathematics and science winning school prizes in mathematics and chemistry. Then he gained a place in the Physics Department at University of Birmingham
He spent his first Summer as an undergraduate working for Evershed & Vignoles, then two Summers working at the Rutherford Laboratory (Now Rutherford Appleton Laboratory) adjacent to A.E.R.E.Harwell. Then graduated with a B.Sc.(Hons.)in July 1962 to commence research for the Ph.D. at Birmingham using the 1 GeV Synchrotron, which was initiated by Professors Sir Mark Oliphant and Philip Burton Moon in the late forties producing first beams in 1953, that was accelerating protons and deuterons. This was the highest energy machine in the UK at the time to be superseded by the 7 GeV weak focusing synchrotron(Nimrod) in 1963/1964 at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Doctoral advisors were Dr. H. B Van Der Raay and Professor William E.Burcham. Jafar participated in many experiments using beams of protons and deuterons. Moreover, he participated in one of the first experiments at Nimrod, elastic n-p charge exchange at 8 GeV/c within a group from RAL, UoB and University of Bristol. Jafar submitted his thesis (Some Elastic Nuclear Interactions at High Energies) and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1965. The external doctoral examiner was Professor Tony Skyrme.
Professional work
Jafar earned a baccalaureate and a Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of Birmingham. He then completed a doctorate at Manchester in 1965. His first job was as an associate researcher at the Institute for Nuclear Physics in London University’s Imperial College. From October 1965, he was awarded a UoB research fellowship to continue work in nuclear physics using the UoB synchrotron. Experiments continued on small angle nucleon-nucleon scattering using sonic spark chambers during 1965/1966. In December 1966 Jafar resigned from this fellowship to return to Iraq with his small family. In February 1967 he was appointed as a research scientist at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center (NRC) of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission(IAEC). The Tuwaitha site was under construction via a contract with Technopromexport, which was a Soviet Union engineering company in charge of foreign energy projects. The site comprised the IRT-2000 swimming pool research reactor with 2000 kW thermal power, radioisotope production facilities, a workshop, and an administration building. The research reactor was commissioned late in 1967. Jafar became head of the Physics Department at NRC in 1967 and worked towards the utilization of neutron beams from the reactor's horizontal channels. A two axis neutron diffractometer capable of upgrade to three axes was set up as well as fast and slow pneumatic transfer systems for irradiation of samples for neutron activation analysis. Ge(Li) γ-ray detectors were used inside a large cylindrical three crystal NaI(Tl) scintillation detectors for pair and anti-compton γ-spectrometry to study radiative thermal neutron capture (n,γ) and inelastic fast neutron (n,n'γ) scattering using separated isotopes as targets. A cooperation agreement was signed with the Kurchatov Institute (KI) in Moscow for joint research in nuclear physics, where KI would loan NRC small quantities of separated isotopes to use as targets in experiments. Close cooperation continued between NRC and Professor L.V. Groshev and Dr. A.M. Demidov of KI for more than a decade. During 1969 Jafar was Acting Head of the Reactor Department at NRC, and from early 1970 until July, was also Acting Director of NRC .