Muhammad Umar Memon, a UW–Madison professor who was an internationally renowned scholar of the Urdu language and literature, died June 3. He was 79.
Memon’s lifelong work was to raise the awareness of Urdu in the West through his scholarship and teaching, and by editing an influential Urdu journal.
“Urdu is my mother tongue and the love of my life,” Memon said in a 2002 interview. Urdu is the official language of Pakistan and is used by roughly 100 million people, mainly in India and Pakistan. More…