Ali Moustafa Mosharafa

Ali Moustafa Mosharafa (1898–1950) was a child prodigy who earned his doctorate of science at King's College London in 1923 under Owen Richardson. Appointed Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cairo University at age twenty-six, he became the first native Egyptian Dean of the Faculty of Science in 1936.

Mosharafa authored groundbreaking papers on the Stark effect, the Zeeman effect, and the quantum radiation of matter, corresponding and debating directly with Albert Einstein. A passionate democratizer of science, he translated classical Arabic science treatises into modern notation and established the Egyptian Academy of Sciences. Upon his sudden death in 1950, Einstein mourned him as an irreplaceable titan of theoretical physics.