Unsung Heroes of Pakistan

Our heroes are who have made the nation proud time and time again. We love and respect the pride of our nation.

1. Mir Zafar Ali

Mir Zafar Ali is a Pakistani movie visual effects artist. He was a member of the team that won the Academy Award for best visual effects for the 2007 film The Golden Compass.

2. Ayesha Farooq

Ayesha Farooq is a Pakistani fighter pilot from Hasilpur, Bahawalpur District, who was the first woman to become a fighter pilot in the Pakistan Air Force.

3. Maria Toorpakai Wazir

Maria is a national squash champion.

4. Naweed Syed

He is the first scientist to connect brain cells to a silicon chip, creating the world’s first neurochip.

5. Syed Imtiaz Ali Taj

He is remembered above all for his 1922 play Anarkali, based on the life of Anarkali, which was staged hundreds of times and was adapted for feature films in India and Pakistan, including the Indian film Mughal-e-Azam.

6. Mehak Gul

Mehak Gul is a Pakistani chess player. She earned the FIDE title of Woman Candidate Master at the 42nd Chess Olympiad.

7. Nusrat Fateh Ali khan

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was a Pakistani singer, songwriter, and music director, primarily a singer of qawwali, a form of Sufi devotional music.

8. Prof. Dr. Abdus Salam

Mohammad Abdus Salam NI SPk was a Pakistani theoretical physicist and a Nobel Prize laureate.

9. Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan

Abdul Qadeer Khan, NI, HI, FPAS, known as A. Q. Khan, was a Pakistani nuclear physicist and metallurgical engineer who is colloquially known as the “father of Pakistan’s atomic weapons program”

10. Samina Baig

She is the first Pakistani woman to climb Everest, K2 and the Seven Summits. She climbed Mt. Everest at the age of 21.

11. Jaun Elia

Jaun Elia, was an Urdu poet, philosopher, biographer, and scholar from South Asia who migrated from India to Pakistan.

12. Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Faiz was a Pakistani poet and author of Punjabi and Urdu literature. He was one of the most celebrated, popular, and influential Urdu writers of his time, and his works and ideas remain widely influential today in Pakistan and beyond.

13. Ataullah Khan Esakhelvi

He is considered as one of the most formidable Classical Folk Singers to have emerged from South Asia.

14. Wasim Akram

Akram is widely regarded as one of the greatest fast bowlers of all time and several critics regard him as the greatest left arm fast bowler of cricket history.

15. Noor Jehan

Noor Jehan, also known by her honorific title Malika-e-Tarannum, was a Punjabi playback singer and actress who worked first in India and then in the cinema of Pakistan. Her career spanned more than six decades.

16. Nazia Hassan

Nazia Hassan was a Pakistani singer-songwriter, lawyer and social activist. Referred to as the Queen of South Asian Pop, she is considered one of the most influential singers in Pakistan and India as well.

17. Kamal Ahmed Rizvi

The government of Pakistan had given Kamal Ahmed Rizvi the Pride of Performance Award in 1989. He rubbed shoulders with many literary luminaries, including writer Sadat Hasan Manto.

18. Jahangir Khan

Jahangir Khan is a former World No. 1 professional Pakistani squash player.

19. Saadat Hassan Manto

Saadat Hasan Manto was a Pakistani writer, playwright and author born in Ludhiana, who was active in British India and later, after the 1947 partition of India, in Pakistan.

20. Shoaib Akhtar

Shoaib Akhtar is a Pakistani former cricketer and commentator. Nicknamed the “Rawalpindi Express”, he was the first bowler to be recorded bowling at 100 miles per hour, a feat he achieved twice in his career.

21. Samiullah Khan

Samiullah Khan is a former field hockey player from Pakistan, who was nicknamed The Flying Horse because of his great speed.

22. Shabana Akhter

Shabana Akhtar is an Olympic athlete from Pakistan. She became Pakistan’s first woman to compete at the Olympics when she took part in the women’s long jump at the 1996 Olympics.

23. Arshad Nadeem

Arshad is a Pakistani javelin thrower. He is the reigning Olympic and Commonwealth Games champion. He is also the current silver medalist in the World Athletics Championship. He set an Olympic record with a throw of 92.97 metres (305.0 ft) at the 2024 Summer Olympics.

24. Abdul Sattar Edhi

Abdus Sattar Edhi NI LPP GPA was a Pakistani humanitarian, philanthropist and ascetic who founded the Edhi Foundation, which runs the world’s largest volunteer ambulance network, along with various homeless shelters, animal shelters, rehabilitation centres, and orphanages across Pakistan.

25. Nooh Dastgir Butt

Muhammad Nooh Dastgir Butt is a gold medalist weightlifter from Gujranwala, Pakistan.

26. Talha Talib

Talha Talib is a Pakistani weightlifter from Gujranwala. He is the Pakistani national champion in the 62 kg category.

27. Junaid Jamshed

Junaid Jamshed Khan was a Pakistani singer-songwriter, television personality, fashion designer, actor, and preacher.

28. Moeen Akhtar

Moin Akhter, was a Pakistani television, film and stage artist, humorist, comedian, impersonator, host, writer, singer, director and producer who rose to fame in the era of Radio Pakistan along with his co-actors Anwar Maqsood and Bushra Ansari.

29. Arslan Ash

Arslan Siddique, better known as Arslan Ash is a Pakistani professional fighting game player of Tekken by Bandai Namco Entertainment.

30. Shahid Afridi

An all-rounder, Afridi was a right-handed leg spinner and a right-handed batsman.

31. Parveen Shakir

A Pakistani poet, teacher and civil servant of the government of Pakistan. She is best known for her poems, which brought a distinctive feminine voice to Urdu literature.

32. Asma Jahangir

Asma Jilani Jahangir was a Pakistani human rights lawyer and social activist who co-founded and chaired the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

33. Iqbal Masih

Iqbal Masih was a Pakistani Christian child labourer and activist who campaigned against abusive child labour in Pakistan assassinated on 16 April 1995 and awarded with the Sitara-e-Shujaat on 23 March 2022.

34. Ali Sadpara

Muhammad Ali Sadpara was a Pakistani high-altitude mountaineer. He was part of the team that successfully completed the first winter ascent to the summit of Nanga Parbat in 2016

35. Babar Azam

Regarded as one of the finest batsmen in contemporary world cricket, he is the only batsman in the world to be in the top 3 rankings across all formats.

36. Arfa Karim

Arfa Abdul Karim Randhawa was a Pakistani student and computer prodigy who became the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional in 2004.

37. Aitzaz Hassan

Aitzaz Hasan Bangash was a Pashtun student from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa who died on 6 January 2014 while preventing a suicide bomber from entering a school at Hangu village.

38. Muniba Mazari

She became the National Ambassador for UN Women Pakistan after being shortlisted in the 100 Inspirational Women of 2015 by BBC.

39. Imran Khan

Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi HI PP is a Pakistani politician and former cricketer who served as the 22nd prime minister of Pakistan.

40. Dadi Leela

Dadi Leela was a Pakistani educationist, music teacher, philanthropist, and a former member of Sindh provincial assembly known for her advocacy of women’s education.

41. Kaleemullah Khan

Kaleemullah Khan is a Pakistani footballer who plays in the Iraqi Premier League for Zakho FC and the Pakistan national team. 

42. Malala Yousafzai

She is the world’s youngest Nobel Prize laureate, and the second Pakistani and the first Pashtun to ever receive a Nobel Prize.

43. Patras Bokhari

Syed Ahmed Shah, commonly known as Patras Bokhari, was a Pakistani humourist, writer, broadcaster and diplomat who served as the first Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations.

44. Bano Qudsia

Bano Qudsia, also known as Bano Aapa, was a Pakistani novelist, playwright and spiritualist. She wrote literature in Urdu, producing novels, dramas plays and short stories. 

45. Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is a Pakistani-Canadian journalist, filmmaker and activist known for her work in films that highlight the inequality among women.

46. Laraib Atta

Laraib Khan is a professional VFX artist who hails from Isakhel, Mianwali, Punjab, Pakistan. She worked as a visual effects artist for a myriad of Hollywood films including 10,000 BC, The Chronicles of Narnia, Prince of Persia, Godzilla and X-Men: Days of Future Past.

47. Deepak Perwani

Deepak Perwani is a Pakistani fashion designer and actor. He is a member of the Hindu Sindhi community in Pakistan.

48. Salman Taseer

Salman Taseer; was a Pakistani businessman and politician, who served as the 26th Governor of Punjab from 2008 until his assassination in 2011.

49. Abida Parveen

Her singing and music have earned her many accolades, and she has been dubbed the 'Queen of Sufi music'.

50. Yasmeen Lari

Yasmeen Lari is Pakistan’s first female architect. She is best known for her involvement in the intersection of architecture and social justice.

51. Amir Khan

Amir Iqbal Khan PP is a British former professional boxer who competed from 2005 to 2022. He held unified light-welterweight world championships.

52. Amina Wali

Amina Wali is a Pakistani alpine skier. She remained national champion for 15 years.

53. Bashir Ahmad (martial arts)

Bashir Ahmad, born October 12, 1982) is a Pakistani-American professional mixed martial artist who is known as the “Godfather of Mixed Martial Arts Pakistan”.

54. Chaudhary Rehmat Ali

He is credited with creating the name “Pakistan” for a separate Muslim homeland in South Asia and is generally known as the originator of the Pakistan Movement.

55. Hakim Muhammad Saeed

Hakeem Muhammad Saeed was a Pakistani medical researcher, scholar and philanthropist. He served as governor of Sindh Province from 1993 until 1994.

56. Pervez Hoodbhoy

Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy is a Pakistani nuclear physicist and activist concerned with the promotion of freedom of speech, secularism and education in Pakistan.

57. Salima Begum (teacher)

Salima has contributed to teacher training, instructing more than 7,000 teachers across her province, and 8,000 more throughout Pakistan.