Prof Trefor Jenkins: a good man in Africa
When the Ford Foundation and the Oppenheimer Family Trust agreed, in 2004, to make a joint Endowment Grant to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits)...
Category : #LegendsofSouthAfricanScience
For the next few months, Scibraai in collaboration with the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) will feature the life stories of 53 South African science legends. These stories were all included in the 2017 book “Legends of South African Science“.
The book features Academy Members who rank among the top achievers in the country. It profiles ASSAf Members who have received some of South Africa’s top awards, viz. the ASSAf Science-for-Society Gold Medal, National Orders of Mapungubwe and Baobab bestowed by the President, or the Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship.
Among the Members featured in the book are a biologist and Nobel Laureate who helped decode DNA; an epidemiologist recognised for groundbreaking research on HIV prevention in women; a social scientist who nudged and cajoled into place the campaign to understand and contain HIV/AIDS in South Africa; a leading mathematics education proponent; a human geneticist whose work helped to clarify the origins of indigenous groups in Africa; one of the world’s leading theorists in cosmology; and a leading immunologist and physician who pioneered higher education transformation in South Africa, in sometimes controversial ways.
* If you cannot wait for your weekly installment of Legend profiles, you can download the full book here.
Jonathan Jansen: the talented transformer
by AdminBraai
Professor Jonathan Jansen doesn’t enjoy being in the media limelight. “I used to, but now I think it’s a drag,” says the former Vice-Chancellor of...
Jan-Hendrik Hofmeyr: a biochemist who believes perceptions can be shifted
by AdminBraai
In academia, change often happens slowly. Academics are born into a paradigm and, more often than not, they maintain that paradigm rather than interrogating and...
Diane Hildebrandt: research for improving lives
by AdminBraai
Diane Hildebrandt was born in Chingola, Zambia and came to South Africa in 1968. Her childhood was spent mostly in Rustenburg, where she completed primary...
Glenda Gray: guided by the needs
by AdminBraai
The road to Kliptown runs more-or-less directly south-west from the centre of Johannesburg, past the core of Soweto, and then takes a sharp turn to...
Prof Wieland Gevers: Institution builder of note
by AdminBraai
Prof Wieland Gevers: Institution builder of note In 1970, a 32-year-old Wieland Gevers faced a big decision: To stay in North America,...
Jill Farrant: resurrection (plant) woman
Prof Jill Farrant’s life merges with water. To be more specific, she’s occupied by the ability of a rare few so-called resurrection plants to seemingly...
Kobus Eloff: Jack-of-all-trades achieves success
by AdminBraai
Twenty years ago, when the Academy of Science of South Africa was established, Jacobus (Kobus) Nicolaas Eloff, then already in his mid-fifties, was invited, as...
George Ellis: the down-to-earth cosmologist
by AdminBraai
For somebody who has spent much of his time thinking about the structure of the universe, Professor George Ellis is remarkably down-to-earth. Over the past...
George Ekama: saving SA precious water
by AdminBraai
Clean water is a basic human requirement, but in an arid country like South Africa keeping it flowing, can be a challenge. Professor George Ekama...