Rachid Idrissi

Moulay Rachid Idrissi (مولاي رشيد الإدريسي; 1939 – October 18, 1971) was a Moroccan nuclear chemist and engineer. Idrissi gained notoriety after his work on the recovery of uranium from phosphates, where he discovered a significant amount of uranium in Moroccan phosphates. Shortly after this discovery, he died in a traffic accident near Rabat, the circumstances of which remain contested.
==Early life and education==
Moulay Rachid Idrissi El Ouatati was born in 1939 in the town of Outat El Haj, near Taza. He studied in the town throughout primary school and later studied at the prestigious Collège d'Azrou. After obtaining his baccalaureate from the collège, he moved to Rabat and continued his studies in chemistry. 
As a young man, Idrissi worked on development projects in his hometown of Outat El Haj, coordinating with UNESCO to build a youth house in the village. He had also worked to establish an agricultural cooperative and a high school in the village.
Idrissi obtained a Doctorate of Science in nuclear chemistry in 1970 from the Faculty of Science at the University of Paris after doing research regarding electrophilic fluorination of uranium dioxide at the Zoé reactor in Fontenay-aux-Roses. He also obtained a degree in chemical engineering from the National Institute for Nuclear Science and Technology in Saclay.
==Scientific career==
Throughout his career, he rejected offers made to him by foreign laboratories and other parties. After returning to Morocco, Idrissi gained an interest in politics and was an ardent trade unionist and adopted Third-Worldism. He became a professor at the Mohammadia School of Engineering and moved to Safi, where he conducted research in a number of laboratories in the late 1960s. 
Idrissi's field of research focused on the recovery of uranium from phosphates, which was Morocco's biggest export. During his research, he mapped the Ganntour basin and its uranium repartition. In 1968, he discovered a significant amount of uranium in Moroccan phosphates, which he announced to local press. Idrissi had estimated that about 72 thousand tons of uranium could be extracted anually as a low-cost byproduct from Moroccan phosphates. The media praised his discovery, and he supplied data regarding his findings to the International Atomic Energy Agency|IAEA.
==Death and legacy==
Rachid Idrissi died on October 18, 1971 in Salé in a car accident while crossing a bridge on Bou Regreg from Rabat on his way to his hometown of Outat El Haj. His sudden death immediately raised suspicion of a political assassination from his entourage. During a speech at his funeral, engineer Mohamed Ait Kaddour, a colleague of Idrissi, stated that he fell victim to "his involvement in establishing a defense project in the Arab world based on his possession of science, knowledge, and ability". A scholar in Idrissi's hometown, Hajj Mohamed Harmouche, blamed his death on "external parties". Newspaper Al Ittihad Al Ichtiraki claimed that Idrissi had been surveilled by foreign intelligence agencies, possibly Mossad, but this has yet to be confirmed. 
A posthumous Rachid Idrissi El Ouatati Prize for Criticism was created in May 2023 by the Oboure Cultural Publishing Association in Rabat, the prize crowns works of literary criticism in Morocco and commemorates Idrissi.
Category:1939 births
Category:1971 deaths
Category:Moroccan chemists
Category:Nuclear chemists
Category:Moroccan engineers
Category:University of Paris alumni
Category:People from Fès-Meknès