Inayatullah Ibrahim Lalani

Physician by training and vocation but retired several years from clinical practice, Lalani is also an amateur astronomer and has maintained lively interest in all branches of science, especially physical sciences as well as in history, politics and all human affairs in the broadest sense of words. His motto is 'Man is the Measure of All Things', an aphorism ascribed to Protagoras, the fifth century B.C. Athenian philosopher.

Lalani's interest in the issue of global climate was piqued some 12 years before publication of 'Al-Battani Shield' and grew apace with intensifying public debate about the environment since then. Retirement from clinical practice afforded him the opportunity to pursue serious study of climatology, a pursuit that has left him somewhat ambivalent about the veracity of the claims, both of the climate change alarmists and the deniers of those claims alike. But Lalani is not ambivalent about the need for pre-emptive and precautionary measures advocated by those who are more firmly persuaded of the impending danger to the health of the planet, not the least because defaulting on taking corrective steps could prove calamitous should the climate change alarmists prove right. In fact he wrote 'Al-Battani Shield' to introduce a new approach to countering global warming. For that reason, too, he finds himself in alliance with Al Gore and company.

When his original proposal of a space based sun barrier to curtail incoming solar radiation, first articulated in a letter to the Editor of The Atlantic Monthly (April 1998) failed to receive significant traction, he decided to write this full length (but small) book in the hope of getting the attention of the policy wonks, opinion makers and specialists in climate science and technology, in short all those charged with the stewardship of our environment.

Currently he is writing two more works of non-fiction and one fiction.

Lalani came to the US in 1963 from India where he was born, raised and got his basic medical education. He was certified in the specialty of surgery in 1970 and practiced for three decades before retiring. He has been married to the former Salma Currimbhoy of Mumbai for almost thirty eight years and lives in Fort Worth, Texas area. He is father of two grown children and a grandfather of three. He writes opinion columns on disparate subjects and is also a political activist, involved in motivating minorities to participate in American democratic political system.