FB has reminded me yesterday of the passing of Prof. S. Twareque Ali on the 25 January 2016. While sad, the memory of Prof. Twareque reminds me the need to keep pushing for the work on mathematical physics. It is quite easy to get disheartened nowadays with all the criticisms and non-ideal situations. Once I described the problems that I was facing and then he would asked, what am I going to do about it, signalling the advice for self-determination and activism. I will always remember that.
Before EQuaLS, I only knew Prof. Twareque by name. The earliest work of Prof. Twareque that I was aware of, is his work with Eduard Prugovecki. It is perhaps accidental that I knew of their work. After my B.Sc. degree, I was primarily interested in theories unifying quantum mechanics and general relativity and was scouting around for ideas and books. My late eldest brother had been buying/ordering books from a local book distributor in Kuala Lumpur and if my memory has not failed me, it was there I saw this book by Prugovecki on Stochastic Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Space-Time and I bought it. It was probably one of the earliest (mathematical physics) book that I have. It was only years later when I was doing my PhD on quantization that I found this paper of Twareque and Prugovecki on systems of imprimitivity (a topic that I needed to learn for Isham's canonical group quantization and Mackey's induced representation theory).
Fast forward a couple of years ahead, I began organizing Expository Quantum Lecture Series (EQuaLS) at the Institute for Mathematical Research (INSPEM). At the time, I was 'new' to INSPEM, since our Theoretical Studies Laboratory (TSL) at Institute of Advanced Technologies (ITMA) (now rebranded as Institute of Nanoscience & Nanotechnology), was asked to merge with INSPEM. At TSL, I have already started a lecture series and I thought I should rebrand it to EQuaLS (having lost TSL). So for the premiering EQuaLS event, I had to think of who to invite. Prof. Twareque Ali was on the top of my list since I wanted to get someone well-known on quantization. At the time, he had wrote this review with Miroslav Englis (see here for arXiv version). I, then, wrote to him and almost immediately got a positive reply and even mentioned my torus paper in PRD in his reply. So EQuaLS1 took off with him giving five lectures. At the end of the event, he came and hugged me emotionally and said something like I have started off something good. He has indeed started many internationally renowned events including the twin event of Group-Theoretic Methods in Theoretical Physics and Quantum Theory & Symmetries, both of which I had the opportunity to attend with his help. Therafter, he came to almost all EQuaLS event (apart from EQuaLS3, EQuaLS4 and EQuaLS7). EQuaLS 8 was the last event he was with us and on the morning before his flight heading home, we received the shocking news that he had passed away. I could not describe how I felt those few days (his body was at Serdang Hospital for a post-mortem). His funeral prayers was conducted at the UPM mosque after Friday prayers.
Prof. Twareque Ali has always said to me that he was fond in coming to Malaysia, stating that the country is a 'hidden treasure'. He has also said that he wished that there would be an institute for mathematical physics in Malaysia. At some point, I was hoping that INSPEM could be a vehicle to realise such idea and had wished he will be around to see it. Alas, things have not quite turned that way and with him not around, the possibility is even more remote. The night before his passing, we were at a restaurant in Seremban talking about research that I wished we could have done together. I mentioned about relatively new results of Gromov's non-squeezing theorem and Spekkens' toy epistemic theory and possible relation with quantization (hinting possible connections with his work with Prugovecki). He had asked me to write this up and perhaps seek international support for this (e.g. CRM). He was noticeably quiet that night and it did not occur to me that that was my last conversation with him. I regretted of not being able to initiate this plan earlier. I am still pursuing indirectly this direction with my students and hope one day, we will be able to discover something worthwhile. Below is the picture of my last conversation with Prof. Twareque. May Allah forgive him and accept his good deeds and grant him Jannah.
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