INVENTORS from South Africa

Top 2

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary South African Inventors of all time. This list of famous South African Inventors is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Elon Musk (b. 1971)

With an HPI of 84.81, Elon Musk is the most famous South African Inventor.  His biography has been translated into 143 different languages on wikipedia.

Elon Reeve Musk (; born June 28, 1971) is a businessman known for his key roles in the space company SpaceX and the automotive company Tesla, Inc. He is also known for his ownership of X Corp. (the company that operates the social media platform X, formerly Twitter), and his role in the founding of the Boring Company, xAI, Neuralink, and OpenAI. Musk is the wealthiest individual in the world; as of January 2025, Forbes estimates his net worth to be US$421 billion. A member of the wealthy South African Musk family, Musk was born in Pretoria and briefly attended the University of Pretoria. At the age of 18 he immigrated to Canada, acquiring its citizenship through his Canadian-born mother, Maye. Two years later, he matriculated at Queen's University in Canada. Musk later transferred to the University of Pennsylvania and received bachelor's degrees in economics and physics. He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University but never enrolled in classes, and with his brother Kimbal co-founded the online city guide software company Zip2. The startup was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. That same year, Musk co-founded X.com, a direct bank. X.com merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal. In 2002, Musk acquired United States citizenship, and that October eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion. Using $100 million of the money he made from the sale of PayPal, Musk founded SpaceX, a spaceflight services company, in 2002. In 2004, Musk was an early investor in electric-vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (later Tesla, Inc.), providing most of the initial financing and assuming the position of the company's chairman. He later became the product architect and, in 2008, the CEO. In 2006, Musk helped create SolarCity, a solar energy company that was acquired by Tesla in 2016 and became Tesla Energy. In 2013, he proposed a hyperloop high-speed vactrain transportation system. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit artificial intelligence research company. The following year Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company developing brain–computer interfaces, and the Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. In 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Musk, alleging he falsely announced that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla. To settle the case, Musk stepped down as the chairman of Tesla and paid a $20 million fine. In 2022, he acquired Twitter for $44 billion, merged the company into his newly-created X Corp. and rebranded the service as X the following year. In 2023, Musk founded xAI, an artificial intelligence company. Musk's actions and expressed views have made him a polarizing figure. He has been criticized for making unscientific and misleading statements, including COVID-19 misinformation, affirming antisemitic and transphobic comments, and promoting conspiracy theories. His ownership of Twitter has been controversial because of large employee layoffs, an increase in posts containing hate speech, misinformation and disinformation on the service, and changes to service features, including verification. By early 2024, Musk became active in American politics as a vocal and financial supporter of US presidential candidate Donald Trump, becoming the largest political donor of the 2024 election. After winning in November, Trump announced that he had chosen Musk along with Vivek Ramaswamy to co-lead his planned Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) advisory board, which is tasked with removing regulations in order to reduce expenditures and increase government efficiency.

2. Phil Ramone (1934 - 2013)

With an HPI of 54.85, Phil Ramone is the 2nd most famous South African Inventor.  His biography has been translated into 24 different languages.

Philip Rabinowitz (January 5, 1934 – March 30, 2013), better known as Phil Ramone, was a South African-born American recording engineer, record producer, violinist and composer, and co-founder of A & R recording studio. Its success led to expansion into several studios and a record production company. He was described by Billboard as "legendary", and the BBC as a "CD pioneer".