مرزا محمد عسکری
افسوس ہے کہ گزشتہ مہینہ اردو زبان کی صف میں دوممتاز جگہیں خالی ہوگئیں، اور مرزا محمد عسکری اور مولوی مہیش پرشاد ہم سے جدا ہوگئے، مرزا صاحب مرحوم قدیم مشرقی تہذیب کا نمونہ، لکھنو کی پرانی بزم ادب کی یادگار، اردو زبان و ادب کے صاحب ذوق و نکتہ سنج ادیب اور متعدد کتابوں کے مصنف و مترجم تھے، ان کی سب سے بڑی علمی یادگار بابو سکسینہ کی تاریخ ادبیات اردو کا ترجمہ ہے، اس میں انھوں نے اتنے اضافے کئے ہیں، اور اس کو اس طرح اردو کے قالب میں ڈھالا ہے کہ اس کی حیثیت تصنیف کی ہوگئی ہے، جس طرح جناب صفی اور آرزو پر لکھنو کی قدیم بزم شاعری کا خاتمہ ہوگیا، اسی طرح مرزا صاحب کی وفات سے اس دور کی بزم ادب کی آخری یادگار مٹ گئی اب وہ تہذیب ہی ختم ہوگئی، وہ سانچہ ہی بدل گیا جس میں تہذیب و شائستگی اور ذوقِ ادب کے یہ نمونے ڈھلتے تھے، اس لئے آئندہ ان کے پیدا ہونے کی امید نہیں اور ان کی جو جگہ بھی ہوگی، وہ خالی ہی رہے گی۔ (شاہ معین الدین ندوی، اکتوبر ۱۹۵۱ء)
Akbar’s Dream [1892] is among the last poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Poet-Laureate of Britain. It was composed when the British Empire was at its apex of territorial expansion and Queen Victoria was the Empress of India. It is reflective of the position of Tennyson as PoetLaureate – whose ‘official’ task was to celebrate the achievements and other notable events of Britain. Tennyson was an ultra-conservative person who believed that Britain was doing a favour to the peoples they had conquered and subjugated. This was intended for their benefit so as to advance them in the scale of civilization.
Enhanced effectiveness of pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals is the most sought-after attribute in the field of enantioselective synthesis of chiral molecules where single enantiomer (R or S) is required, for which asymmetric catalysis is an attractive way. The synthesis of enantiomerically pure compounds in traditional way is difficult, costly and time-consuming process involving the running of long columns which create a lot of waste that causes water pollution. The selectivity of products are equally depends upon the catalyst and conditions of the reaction which makes the task harder for selecting and finding new catalytic system. Present work deals with the development of six families of chiral ligands libraries for rapid recognition of the best system, by using combinatorial chemistry, during hydrogenation of ketones, a starting material and as intermediate in a number of pharmaceutical processes. The ligands were both generated in situ and in pure form for the comparison of results and were obtained by simple condensation, providing one of the starting materials being chiral. Six families namely; bisimine, diamine, aminal, imine, iminophosphine and oxazoline were synthesized and tested in presence of Zn(II), Rh(I) and Rh(III) by using polymethylhydrosiloxane (PMHS), diphenylsilane and formic acid/sodium formate as hydrogen donor species for transfer hydrogenation during synthesis of selective chiral alcohols from achiral acetophenone. Overall 1566 catalytic systems were developed and subsequently tested and the yield and enantiomeric excesses were found by using 1H NMR and chiral High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) respectively with more than 90% ee and 99% conversion as the best result for imine and aminal ligands. It has been proven that ligands synthesized in-situ gave comparable and almost same results to purified version with best reproducibility.