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Tonight local scientists get out of their labs, shut the
door on their classrooms, turn off their laptops and converge
on the Sandton Hilton. It’s time to dress up, eat out, and
lift some weights. Or rather, six winners will have to lift
weights, as they heft their solid black granite awards, with a
solitary gold-coloured atom orbiting the top, which will be
handed out tonight at the fifth annual National Science and
Technology Forum science Oscars.
As good science is
often the result of good teamwork, half the awards honour
scientific institutions – small to medium-sized enterprises,
non-profits and corporations. But three awards salute
individual discoveries. The most prestigious is the award for
lifetime achievements (see box). All the finalists in the
lifetime category are pale males, which is perhaps a
reflection of South Africa’s history. But if you want a
glimpse of South Africa’s future, check out the finalists for
recent research:
- one of the finalists for his research in the last two
years is Professor Tshilidza Marwala, Wits University
information engineer, the youngest finalist at 31 years old.
The Venda-born, Cambridge-trained academic spent a decade
abroad but returned to the land of his birth two years ago.
Marwala can measure when buildings and bridges get the
shakes, whether from earthquakes or Volvos - and from that
information, he can predict their lifespan. He uses the
probability theory devised a long time ago by
eighteenth-century English theologian and mathematician, the
Reverend Thomas Bayes, to design computers and machines that
can learn.
- then there’s Professor Sarah Howie of the University of
Pretoria’s education department, at 35 the second-youngest
contender in the recent research category (and presumably
the only pregnant one, as all her opponents are male). As
director for the university’s Centre for Evaluation, Howie
heads the South African section of the massive
continent-wide investigation, funded by the World Bank, into
fixing problems in secondary school education across Africa.
Not bad for someone who hated Standard Ten physics but then,
this is the woman who uncovered the fact that the best
science and mathematics teachers were the oldest. Why?
Because teachers educated in the struggle years lost up to
two-thirds of their study to strikes and protests – not
items which feature highly on the science and math agenda
- biotechnologist Dr Winston Leukes has moved jobs since
being nominated, from the ivory tower to the private sector,
but he still does precisely the same work. First as head of
biotechnology at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, and now
with his own Cape Town-based start-up, Synexa Life Sciences,
he uses cutting-edge technology to harness Mother Nature’s
bacteria and bugs. Once Leukes’ car broke down while taking
students on an expedition. After hiking 10 kilometres to a
self-catering chalet in a game reserve allegedly “just
around the next corner,” he discovered an indestructibly
hungry fungus at the bungalow, surviving despite direct
sunlight and munching away on unpleasant things such as
creosote. It’s now gobbling up a horrible pollutant, the
acid sludge leftovers from distilling red wine.
- some inventors are pure eccentrics. Others have the
commercial knack – like Cape Town finalist Marius van der
Merwe, a medical doctor and entrepreneur. He invented and
patented a plastic spatula which makes tests for cervical
cancer safer, cheaper and easier. Among his 20 inventions:
an inexpensive safety scalpel cunningly designed from a
single piece of plastic, which retracts automatically,
preventing both surgeons and cleaning ladies from accidental
injuries. And many parents know of his hollow baby dummies,
which are really syringes to be filled with Panado or other
liquid medicine for a fretful infant. Even if you’re not a
parent, you benefit from van der Merwe’s curiosity: all his
discoveries translate into healthy foreign exchange earners.
- not all tummy bugs are bad news, according to Dr Charles
Horn, head of gastro-intestinal micro- and bio-technology at
the Agricultural Research Council in Pretoria. He harnesses
the body’s own natural remedies, commercialises these potent
biotherapeutics and uses these useful micro-organisms to
stimulate the immune system. Rural children at risk of dying
from diarrhoea have benefited, as have cancer patients
battling the side effects of drugs, AIDS patients and women
with vaginal infections. But it’s not limited to humans:
veterinary medicine and animal husbandry uses his products,
with the result that we can export animal products to the
demanding European Union market.
Lifetime achievers
Sweden has the Nobel
prizes. Hollywood has the Oscars. South African
scientists, accustomed to almost complete anonymity,
come into the public spotlight at the annual National
Science and Technology Forum awards. Fourteen
nominations were received this year in the lifetime
achievement category.
One of the finalists is a world-renowned textile
scientist, Professor Lawrance Hunter, who juggles the
high-ranking post of divisional fellow at Africa’s
largest research institute, the Council for Scientific
and Industrial Research, with heading the
post-graduate department of textile science at the
University of Port Elizabeth. If the shirt off your
back was produced locally, Hunter’s had something to
do with improving its quality.
Another lifetime achiever is Dr Tony Ribbink, a man
obsessed with the “dinosaur fish”, the wily
Coelecanth. During the apartheid era he worked in
Malawi and Tanzania, doing conservation management and
environmental awareness but as programmes director for
the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity
in Grahamstown, Ribbink’s team recently set up a lab
on board a ship in order to grow cells from a
coelecanth lurking in the deep waters off Sodwana Bay
in KwaZulu Natal – thus giving us the chance to look
back in time to possible ancestors living 400 million
years ago.
The 114 DiNaledi schools are the offspring of
finalist Dr Michael Kahn, executive director of
knowledge management at the Human Sciences Research
Council. By pumping resources into selected schools,
Kahn hopes to double – perhaps treble – the number of
African higher grade passes in sciences and maths. His
SYSTEM - Student and Youth into Science, Technology,
Engineering and Mathematics – saw up to 1000 learners
in three years being given a second chance to improve
their science and math matric marks. Many have gone on
to shine in their careers.
Flow injection analysis, and its cousin, sequential
injecton analysis, are priorities for Professor Koos
van Staden from the worldclass Department of Chemistry
at the University of Pretoria. While they may not be
the most common phrases for non-chemists, the
practical biomedical implications of van Staden’s work
for ordinary people have been immense: try the killers
malaria, AIDS and hepatitis B, for a start.
He’s officially retired but biologist Roy Siegfried
still works hard, consulting and lecturing. Professor
emeritus at the University of Cape Town and
Extraordinary Professor at the University of
Stellenbosch, Siegfried’s work has been at the
forefront of environmental research, pioneering the
use of radio-telemetry – fixing some form of space-age
broadcasting signal to an animal so its uninhibited
movements, bodily functions and behaviour can be
tracked. The marine science Benguela Ecology
Programme, stretching along the West Coast through
Naimbia to southern Angola, was founded by him two
decades ago. The impact of tourism, mining and
heavily-subsidised Soviet-era fishing industries on
the Antarctic is an interest, as is the Western Cape
fynbos and the Karoo Biome.
Dr Kelvin Kemm began as a nuclear scientist,
founded the business strategy consultancy STRATEK in
Pretoria and is best known as for his media work,
including the biggest-ever technology series in the
country, the weekly television show Impact, which
aired for 18 months a decade ago. He’s passed the 500
article benchmark in his 11 years of writing columns
for the magazine Engineering News, never missing a
week, and is often critical of the science community’s
failure to communicate with the
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