Bilal U. Haq

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Bilal Haq
Bilal U. Haq in 2013
Born
Bilal Ul Haq

(1948-10-08) 8 October 1948 (age 75)
Alma mater
Awards
  • Awarded Prestwich Prize (2019)
  • Elected to Academia Europaea (European Academy of Science and Letters) (2015)
  • Conferred Docteur honoris causa by Sorbonne University (2013)
  • Awarded AGU Ocean Sciences Award (2004)
  • Awarded US NSF Antarctic Medal (1999)
  • Elected Fellow AAAS (1999)
  • Awarded Shepard Medal for excellence in marine geology (1998)
  • Elected Fellow GSA (1976)
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions

Punjab]]


Thesis Paleogene Calcareous Nannoflora: Rates of Evolution in Cenozoic Calcareous Nannoplankton  (1972)
Doctoral advisorIvar Hessland
Website

Bilal U. Haq is a Pakistani-American geoscientist (and poet) who is currently affiliated with and divides his time between the

eustatic curves that are widely used in the academia and industry as the basis for global stratigraphy
and in exploration geology. He is a laureate of the Prestwich Prize for geosciences from France.

Early life and education

Bilal Haq was born in the foothills of Himalayas (Gorakhpur) where his father Mohammad Fazl-i-Haq was a senior ICS officer in the British Indian government. After the independence of India his father opted to serve in the new nation of Pakistan since his family originated from Lahore, now in Pakistan. He received his early education at

St. Paul's and Central Model Schools in Karachi and Lahore, respectively. In Lahore, he also earned his Bachelor and Master of Science degrees from the Government College and the Punjab University. In Europe, after receiving a diploma in German language from Dolmetscher Insitut of Heidelberg University, he started his graduate research at the University of Vienna[1] and then moved to Sweden to earn his PhD and DSc degrees in marine geoscience from the University of Stockholm.[2]

Career

Bilal U. Haq's career spans over five decades, and he has carried out research in several disciplines of marine geosciences at the

Exxon Production Research Company in Houston,[4] the National Science Foundation in Washington, DC,[5] the Universities of Copenhagen,[6] Cambridge, Oxford,[7] Paris (UPMC,[8] Sorbonne[9]) and Utrecht. He has consulted with, provided advice to, or delivered specialized courses to numerous multinational resource companies, and geological surveys around the world through his consulting partnership.[10]

He was seconded to the World Bank in Washington, DC in their Environment Department, where already in 1994 he produced a special report on the effects of climate change and sea-level rise on the economies of developing maritime nations.[11][12]

In 1994 Haq was also seconded by NSF to the White House's Executive Office of the US president for the

honorary professor at both Tongji University
in Shanghai and the Academia Sinica Institute of Ocean Sciences in Qingdao, China, and was a visiting professor at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the UK.

Bilal Haq is also a poet who has published four volumes of poetry,[14] with insights into nature and the nature of man. His poetic license, enabled by his scientific background, has been fondly dubbed by his peers as "geopoetry", and his poetic message is that we have to learn to live with nature, if we are to survive.

Among Haq's many services to the scientific community was his rescue of a prolific fossil site in the Shandong province of China (Confucius' birthplace) through an international appeal,[15] (now a National Geopark). He also conceived and helped create a paleontological Geopark (together with the Chinese biologist and academician, Zheng Shouyi) consisting of giant sculptures based on fossil micro-organisms (Foraminifera) in Zhongshan City in Guangdong Province.[16][17] Since its opening in December 2009, the sculpture park has been visited by over 200,000 visitors every year, which the Smithsonian magazine declared the second most important "Evo-tourism" site in the world.[18] This was followed by another, larger, Foraminiferal sculpture park in the city of Qingdao, that was established in 2017.

Research

Bilal Haq's research covers a broad spectrum of geosciences, from

deep basins and continental margins and the paleoceanography of this enclosed Sea.[26] Haq has published over 150 research papers, book chapters and encyclopedia articles, several of them among the most highly cited in Earth sciences,[27] of which one was chosen as among the top 100 papers in geosciences of all time.[28]

Awards and honours

Bilal Haq's honors include the Shepard Medal for excellence in marine geology,

Geological Society of France. He has been recognized for his research by the award of a doctoris honoris causa by the Sorbonne University, election to the membership of the European Academy of Science and Letters (Academia Europaea),[34] and to fellowships of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
and the Geological Society of America. Haq has also been honored by his peers with the naming of a fossil plankton species and a genus after him. His international appeal saved a prolific fossil site from destruction (that was later declared a National Geopark) in Shandong Province in China and he helped create two Foraminiferal sculpture parks in Guangzhou and Qingdao.

Haq's poetry

Bilal Haq has published four volumes of poetry: Reflections (2016), Musings (2017), Ruminations (2017) and Glimpses of Nature and Man (2018).[14]

References

  1. ^ Haq, Bilal U. "A personal Tribute to Herbert Stradner: a consummate discoverer and an incomparable scholar of the "inner space". In: 10th International Symposium on the Cretaceous, Vienna, 2017". Berichte der Geologischen Bundesanstalt. 120. Wien – via Academia.edu.
  2. ^ "Academy of Europe: CV". www.ae-info.org. Retrieved 2 April 2023.
  3. UC San Diego Library
    Digital Collections. 1978.
  4. ^ "Bilal U. Haq. Géologue à Exxon production research company, Houston, Texas, USA (en 1984)". Bibliothèque nationale de France.
  5. ^ "Testimony Before the House Committee on Science Subcommittee on Energy and Minerals. May 25, 1999". National Science Foundation.
  6. ^ "PhD Course : Sea level and Basin Formation, (Lecturers Dr. Bilal Haq and Pr. Sierd Cloetingh). June 2012". University of Copenhagen. 15 March 2013.
  7. .
  8. ^ "Institut des Sciences de la Terre de Paris – Les équipes – Haq Bilal". Institut des Sciences de la Terre de Paris. Archived from the original on 21 November 2021. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  9. ^ "Bilal Haq – Sorbonne University". Academia.edu.
  10. ^ "TerraDynamics International BV".
  11. ^ Haq, Bilal U. (31 October 1994). "Sea level rise and coastal subsistence : rates and threats" (Working Paper). Environment Department. The World Bank Special Report. Report Number 24750. Washington, DC.
  12. .
  13. WhiteHouse.gov
    .
  14. ^ a b Haq, Bilal (2017). Glimpses of Nature and Man: Selected poems of Bilal Haq. The Hague, Netherlands: TerraFreund Publishers.
  15. S2CID 220098103
    – via ScienceMag.org.
  16. ScienceMag.org
    .
  17. ^ Haq, Bilal; Zheng, Shouyi (2017). True Goliaths of the Sea: Inner Space Made Visible. The Hague, Netherlands: TerraFreund Publishers.
  18. ^ Larkins, Karen (January 2012). "Evolution World Tour: Foraminifera Sculpture Park, China". Smithsonian Magazine.
  19. S2CID 24673686
    – via ResearchGate.
  20. – via ScienceMag.org.
  21. Elsevier Science Direct
    .
  22. – via The Geological Society of America.
  23. – via The Geological Society of America.
  24. .
  25. .
  26. – via Elsevier Science Direct.
  27. ^ "Bilal U. Haq – Citations Google Scholar". Google Scholar.
  28. ^ "Foundations of Earth Science: The top 100 publications". MantlePlumes.org.
  29. Geotimes
    . May 1998.
  30. ^ "SEPM – Past Winners". Society for Sedimentary Geology.
  31. ^ "HAQ RECEIVES 2004 OCEAN SCIENCES AWARD". American Geophysical Union. 2004.
  32. ^ "Société Géologique de France – Lauréats". 2019.
  33. ^ "Prestwich Prize acceptance speech by Bilal Haq". Société Géologique de France. 4 December 2019.
  34. ^ "Academia Europaea – Bilal Haq". 12 July 2019.