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.
#LegendsofSouthAfricanScience

Prof Trefor Jenkins: a good man in Africa

AdminBraai
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)...
#LegendsofSouthAfricanScience

Jonathan Jansen: the talented transformer

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...
#LegendsofSouthAfricanScience Biology & Evolution

Jan-Hendrik Hofmeyr: a biochemist who believes perceptions can be shifted

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...
#LegendsofSouthAfricanScience

Diane Hildebrandt: research for improving lives

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...
#LegendsofSouthAfricanScience

Glenda Gray: guided by the needs

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...
#LegendsofSouthAfricanScience

Prof Wieland Gevers: Institution builder of note

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,...
#LegendsofSouthAfricanScience

Jill Farrant: resurrection (plant) woman

Engela Duvenage
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...
#LegendsofSouthAfricanScience

Kobus Eloff: Jack-of-all-trades achieves success

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...
#LegendsofSouthAfricanScience

George Ellis: the down-to-earth cosmologist

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...
#LegendsofSouthAfricanScience

George Ekama: saving SA precious water

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...