After PhD he had many offers but chose to do a post-doctoral fellowship
at Imperial College (London) since he wanted to stay in England (by the
way, in England, imperial college is the best place
after Cambridge and Cambridge has a rule of not taking their own
student as post-doc). I met Mahbub bhai and I can simply say that
I never met anybody in my life so modest, honest and compassionate as
Mahbub bhai. Just to give an example, Mahbub bhai received US$ 1000 per
year forbooks as a part of his presidential scholarship. He used to
spend this money buying books for Dhaka university library.

During his post doctoral years Mahbub bhai made frequent visits to
Bangladesh and worked as a coach for the Bangladesh math Olympiad team.
Only those who are involved with the hectic field of high energy physics
knows what sacrifice this means.

Anyway, to our great surprise, Mahbub bhai (who was born and brought up
in USA and can’t even speak bangla very fluently) decided to join the
Dhaka University Physics department as a faculty and … failed to get
any position. Today I heard what happened during the interview.

The “interview” was taken by Yusuf Haider, Badrul Alam and Aminur
Rashid (I decided not to use any Sir after their name and comment on their
character).

During the interview they first raised question about Mahbub bhai’s
certificate from Stanford. The certificate showed the name of the
university as Leland Stanford Junior University. The interviewers suspected
that this is not the Stanford university they heard of. At some point
somebody suggested that they can look it up in the internet (you can do
that too and make sure to take a look at seal of the university).

Then they asked him to write down the Maxwell’s equations. Mahbub bhai
wrote is down with exterior derivatives in one line (most useful and
elegant form for theoretical physicists). The interviewers did not
understand what he wrote and asked him to write it again. Mahbub bhai now
wrote it with tensor notation.

The interviewers again found it incomprehensible and asked for it
again. At some point Mahbub bhai wrote all four Maxwell equations
in a form understandable for first year physics students and everybody
was happy.

Then the interviewers expressed their concern whether Mahbub bhai will
be able to take care of first-second year labs since he
does not have “relevant” experience. At some point, they asked him
whether he read the advertisement properly and pointed out that they
require the candidate to have a BSc in physics whereas Mahbub bhai has a
bachelor in electrical engineering. Therefore, the interviewers decided
that Mahbub bhai is not qualified to become a faculty of DU physics.

A senior friend of mine (who told me the story) commented: “I am happy
that Mahbub did not get the job. It is good for hie career.

But I am sad for Bangladesh.”