Geoffrey Langlands

Langlands was born in 1917, with a twin brother, in Hull, England, to a father employed in an Anglo-American company and a mother who was a classical folk dance instructor. His father died in the 1918 flu pandemic that killed millions worldwide. His mother then took her children to her parents' home in Bristol. She died of cancer ten years later, as soon thereafter did the children's grandfather, His older brother received a scholarship to an orphan school in Bristol, and a family friend helped secure positions for the other children. ==Career==

Military career In July 1935, Langlands completed his A Level education and began his teaching career in London, the following year at age 18. In September 1936, he was a mathematics and science teacher to second grade students in a school in Croydon. After Bangalore, Langlands was stationed in Dehradun. He was promoted to temporary captain on 28 July 1945, subsequently transferring to the 14th Punjab Regiment. Teaching career Langlands began his career in Pakistan by working as an instructor for the country's newly created army. He selected and trained officers for approximately six years. Upon the completion of the contract with Pakistan Army, British Army troops began to leave the country, and Langlands had to decide what to do next. Ayub Khan, then President of Pakistan, asked him to stay and teach, which he immediately agreed to do. He devoted the next 25 years to the so-called "Eton of Pakistan", Aitchison College in Lahore, and rising to be the college's dean and headmaster of its prep school. and served until September 1989. In late 1989, Langlands took charge of the first private school in Chitral, which was later renamed Langlands School and College in his honour. grew steadily under his leadership. From 80 pupils it grew to 800, about a third girls, and many won scholarships to universities. Langlands disagreed with some of the changes his successor - also a British citizen - began to put in place. He attempted to prevent Carey Schofield from doing her work by asking a former pupil, Chaudhary Nisar Ali Khan, the Interior Minister, to deny her a work visa. Eventually scores of the college staff boarded a school bus for the 1000 km drive to Lahore, where they met with Langlands and persuaded him to allow Schofield to continue her work. == Death and legacy==

Geoffrey Langlands died at the age of 101 in a hospital in Lahore on 2 January 2019 following a brief illness. Al-Jazeera called him one of the country's "most respected educators" The BBC said his "death [sent] a whole country into mourning" Other former students include Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Aleem Khan. Aaj News called Langlands "a phenomenon":Generations of Pakistanis owe their education to him. In a career lasting 60 years, he has sought to maintain the ethos of the English public school in an alien land, long after the sun set on the empire he served. Britain has changed out of all recognition since Langlands departed its shores in the middle of the Second World War to serve with the Indian Army. By going away and staying away, his old-fashioned brand of Britishness, involving service rather than gain, has been preserved. ==Recognition==

• Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE; 1982) • Order of St Michael and St George (CMG; 2010) • Hilal-e-Imtiaz (HI; 2011) • Sitara-i-Imtiaz (1987) • Sitara-i-Pakistan (SPk, 2004) ==See also==