Famous South African Scientists

Mark Shuttleworth is a South African-British entrepreneur. He is credited with founding Canonical, the company that developed the popular Linux-based Ubuntu operating system. Mark Shuttleworth became the first African from an independent country and the first South African to travel to space; he traveled as a space tourist in 2002.

Sydney Brenner was a South African biologist who made important contributions to various areas of molecular biology, including the genetic code. Brenner shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sir John E. Sulston and H. Robert Horvitz. Sydney Brenner is credited with founding the Molecular Sciences Institute, which is situated in the United States of America.

South African-born American mathematician and computer scientist Seymour Papert is best remembered for co-inventing the computer programming language Logo, which is also an educational tool. He was part of the faculty at MIT and was known for his pioneering research on children’s learning processes, the constructionist movement, and AI.

Michael Levitt is a biophysicist who has been serving as a Stanford University professor of structural biology since 1987. Along with Arieh Warshel and Martin Karplus, Levitt received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2013. He has also received several other awards, including the DeLano Award for Computational Biosciences and was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in 2002.

South African physicist Neil Turok is associated with the faculty of the University of Edinburgh and is known for his study on the Ekpyrotic universe and cosmology. He has been the director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada and is the founder of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences.

Pioneering South African-born British developmental biologist Lewis Wolpert is known for introducing the French flag model of embryonic development. He was associated with King’s College London and University College London. A victim of depression and suicidal thoughts in his later years, he wrote about his condition in the book Malignant Sadness.

Solly Zuckerman began his career as a research anatomist at the London Zoological Society. Known for his books such as The Social Life of Monkeys and Apes, he had also taught at Oxford University and worked on projects of the British government during World War II, thus developing operational research.

Nobel Prize-winning South African-born American physicist Allan McLeod Cormack is remembered for his research on X-ray computed tomography. He was associated with both Harvard and Tufts University. He later became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was also bestowed with the National Medal of Science.

South African geologist Alexander du Toit was one of the most prominent supporters of Alfred Wegener's continental drift theory. Moreover, he added on to Wegener’s hypothesis by suggesting two primordial continents: Laurasia and Gondwana, the former in the north and the latter in the south.

South African-American geophysicist, oceanographer, and meteorologist invented the bathythermograph to measure temperatures and depths of the sea. He also proposed the founding of the Sea Grant Colleges. Associated with the University of Minnesota, he planned the futuristic Minnesota Experimental City, though it never materialized.

Copley Medal-winning British physicist Frederick Charles Frank is remembered for his extensive research on crystals. He contributed to what is now known as the Frank–Read source of dislocations. He was associated with the University of Bristol and was a Fellow of the Royal Society.