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The Most Famous

PHYSICISTS from South Africa

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This page contains a list of the greatest South African Physicists. The pantheon dataset contains 717 Physicists, 3 of which were born in South Africa. This makes South Africa the birth place of the 31st most number of Physicists behind Romania and Norway.

Top 3

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

Photo of Allan MacLeod Cormack

1. Allan MacLeod Cormack (1924 - 1998)

With an HPI of 61.71, Allan MacLeod Cormack is the most famous South African Physicist.  His biography has been translated into 50 different languages on wikipedia.

Allan MacLeod Cormack (February 23, 1924 – May 7, 1998) was a South African American physicist who won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (along with Godfrey Hounsfield) for his work on X-ray computed tomography (CT), a significant and unusual achievement since Cormack did not hold a doctoral degree in any scientific field.

Photo of George F. R. Ellis

2. George F. R. Ellis (1939 - )

With an HPI of 45.26, George F. R. Ellis is the 2nd most famous South African Physicist.  His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.

George Francis Rayner Ellis, FRS, Hon. FRSSAf (born 11 August 1939), is the emeritus distinguished professor of complex systems in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He co-authored The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time with University of Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking, published in 1973, and is considered one of the world's leading theorists in cosmology. From 1989 to 1992 he served as president of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation. He is a past president of the International Society for Science and Religion. He is an A-rated researcher with the NRF. Ellis, an active Quaker, was a vocal opponent of apartheid during the National Party reign in the 1970s and 1980s, and it is during this period that Ellis's research focused on the more philosophical aspects of cosmology, for which he won the Templeton Prize in 2004. He was also awarded the Order of the Star of South Africa by Nelson Mandela, in 1999 . On 18 May 2007, he was elected a fellow of the British Royal Society .

Photo of Stanley Mandelstam

3. Stanley Mandelstam (1928 - 2016)

With an HPI of 45.00, Stanley Mandelstam is the 3rd most famous South African Physicist.  His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.

Stanley Mandelstam (; 12 December 1928 – 23 June 2016) was a South African theoretical physicist. He introduced the relativistically invariant Mandelstam variables into particle physics in 1958 as a convenient coordinate system for formulating his double dispersion relations. The double dispersion relations were a central tool in the bootstrap program which sought to formulate a consistent theory of infinitely many particle types of increasing spin.

Pantheon has 3 people classified as physicists born between 1924 and 1939. Of these 3, 1 (33.33%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living physicists include George F. R. Ellis. The most famous deceased physicists include Allan MacLeod Cormack and Stanley Mandelstam. As of April 2022, 1 new physicists have been added to Pantheon including Stanley Mandelstam.

Living Physicists

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Deceased Physicists

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Newly Added Physicists (2022)

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