Physics Department News

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• ----------------------- 2008 -------------------------------------------
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• 11 July: The 2008 South African Institute of Physics Gold Medal is awarded to Professor Krish Bharuth-Ram, Honorary Professor of Physics at UCT. Congratulations.
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• 11 July: A memorial celebration of the life of John Juritz (1920 - 2008) is held in the department. In memory of his father, David Juritz plays violin below an image of John.
• 2 July: The Physics department is saddened by the news of the death of Emeritus Associate Professor John Juritz.
• Associate Professor Saalih Allie and Associate Professor Andy Buffler have won an inaugural Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED)'s Award for Collaborative Educational Practice. The CHED Award was launched last year and three winning groups each won R40 000. They produced a Student Work Book to support the teaching of practical first-year physics laboratory skills.
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• ----------------------- 2007 -------------------------------------------
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• 31 December: Dr Shaun Wyngaardt leaves UCT to take up a senior lectureship at the University of Stellenbosch. Go well, Shaun.
• 9 October: Professor Cesareo Dominguez is made a Fellow of UCT. Congratulations, and may his research prosper!
• 1 September: David Aschman takes over as Head of Department from Craig Comrie.
• 15 June: At the June graduation ceremony were
  • three PhD graduates: Bruce Becker, and the recently married (to each other) Sarah Blyth and Mark Horner. They had been students of Jean Cleymans in high energy physics.

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  • Adetula Bolade obtained a MSc with a thesis in solid state physics
  • Ros Skelton and Given Phaladi, graduating with MSc degrees. They had been Physics BSc students a few years ago.
• Amanda Weltman (UCT BSc(Hons) in Theoretical Physics 2000) graduates with a PhD at Columbia University. Mazeltov!

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• 25 April: We hear that Anne Dabrowski has successfully defended her PhD thesis "Measuring charged semileptonic Kaon decays at CERN (NA48/2 expt)" at North-Western University. Good job, Anne! She attached a bottle of bubbly to the note in appreciation of the good preparation she received here during her BSc (Honours) course in 2000.
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• ----------------------- 2006 -------------------------------------------
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• 17 October: A true scholar is rewarded - Roger Fearick is promoted ad-hominem to Associate Professor. Well done Roger!
• 5 October: Bruce Becker is back in town for a while, attending the UCT-Alice review group meetings.
• 15 September : Professor Harald Fritzsch (Munich) is a visitor to the Institute for Theoretical Physics at UCT, for a month or so.
• 01 August 2006: A/Prof Saalih Allie returns from a two year absence in the USA.
• 31 July 2006: New postgraduates starting in this second semester are
  • Thifhelimbilu Singo (MSc student in experimental nuclear physics)
  • Ms Hindoya Ahmed (MSc student in Solid State Physics)
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• 29 June: Several students at AIMS, Muizenberg, having done a research essay under supervision of a UCT Physics department member, graduate with a postgraduate diploma.
• . June: At the June graduation degrees are awarded to:
  • MSc in Physics:
• Dr Zeblon Vilakazi has been appointed Director of iThemba LABS. Well done.
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• ----------------------- 2005 -------------------------------------------
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• 15 December 2005: End of year Physics party, with a farewell to the retiring Sandy Perez and Don Ball. Don has been at UCT Physics since 1968, and Sandy since 1970.
• 14 December 2005: At the UCT Science Faculty Graduation ceremony:
  • Professor Raoul Viollier becomes a UCT Fellow
  • the PhD degree is conferred on Marco Benatar and Spencer Wheaton
  • MSc is awarded to Heather Gray and Ziyanda Sigcau
  • BSc(Hons) to: Anna Mohr, Reintjes, Max Richter, Mark Riemer and Ayron Rule
  • BSc with a major in physics to (*= distinction in physics, **= degree with distinction): Ray Angelil, Warrick Ball, Louis Eggers(*,**), Jeff Fearon(*), Ben Irving, Tana Joseph, Wally Ledgerwood, James Mason(*,**), Nicolette Pekeur and Raoul Rontsch (*,**)
• October 2005: Professor Krish Bharuth-Ram, director of iThembaLABS, becomes an honorary professor of physics at UCT.
• 18 April 2005: Michelle Lawrence has joined as a departmental assistant. She will be in charge of photocopying and printing. Welcome Michelle!
• 15 April 2005: At iThembaLABS today, the president of the NRF announces that from July 1 2005 till the end of 2006, the interim director of iThembaLABS will be Prof Krish Bharuthram, an old nuclear physics collaborator of many in the department, and from 2007 it will be our own Dr Zeblon Vilakazi. Congratulations!!
• 1 April 2005: Welcome back to Karin Newton, who rejoins use as a part-time secretary (some mornings and some afternoons, ie in between golf!).
• 1 February 2005: Welcome to Dr Azwinndini Muronga who joins us as a senior lecturer. He was a student here some 5 or 6 years ago, and has been in the USA and Germany doing research in theoretical particle physics.
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• -------------------------- 2004 -----------------------------------------------------
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• 30 November 2004: Danie Momsen, Principal Technical Officer, and Head of the Workshop, who has been in the Physics department since the 70's, retires. Go well, Danie!
• 30 October 2004: Carmen Perez leaves us to move on the UCT History Department.
• 3 September 2004: Mrs Julie Davids, who has been a Departmental Assistant in Physics since 1992, resigns. We wish her good luck.
• 1 September 2004: Associate Professor Craig Comrie is now the Head of Department, following Professor Cleymans who has stepped down.
• 1 September 2004: Dr Shaun Wyngaardt joins the Department as a Lecturer. Weclome Shaun.
• 1 April 2004: Rudolph Nchodu joins UCT Physics Department! Welcome Rudolph.
• 15 March 2004: Amusing exchange in the foyer of the RW James building. Two students are looking at the 3-d model of the ocean floor around Southern Africa.
  Young freshette (humanities): "I can't see Robben Island in this 3-d model".
  Physics Honours student: "Well, you wouldn't, you see. Islands aren't attached to the sea floor, they just sort of float, ..., er, .. Oh, what am I saying, I must be talking absolute rubbish...."
• 13 February 2004: Registration data: about 17 starting first years declare an intended Physics major in the MPSS programme; about 25 in second year physics; 8 in third year physics, and about 12 in Honours Physics (PHY400/1/2W).
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• 22 January 2004: Hot! Actually so hot that Buffler buys an air-conditioner.
• 20 January 2004: Amanda Weltman (UCT Theoretical Physics Honours in 2000), a Phd student at Columbia appears. She will be here till April.
• 12 - 30 January 2004: The ASTI (African Theory Summer Institute) gets underway. Some excellent lectures on particle physics and cosmology.
• 11 January 2004: Piloted by Zeblon Vilakazi and Rory Adams, a minibus with 6 UCT students sets off for the Millennium 2004 Summer School in Nuclear and Particle Physics, at the iThala game park in north-eastern KZN. It is a 22 hour drive! The school turns out to be great. Lots of game in the park.
• 9 January 2004: Staffing news - Dr Rudolph Nchodu, an applied nuclear physicist and physics educationalist, will join UCT Physics as a Lecturer on 1 April.
• 6 January 2004: Carmen Perez is the new part-time secretary. Welcome!
• 1 January 2004: Ad-hominem promotions starting in 2004: Andy Buffler and Margit Haerting become Associate Professors; Zeblon Vilakazi becomes Senior Lecturer. Congratulations.
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• 19 December 2003: A farewell tea for Karin Newton, who retires after being a part time departmental secretary for 14 years or so. Go well, skattie, we shall miss you!
• 13 December 2003: Saalih Allie marries Mary-Grace. Best wishes to them.
• 12 December 2003: Science graduation.
• 10 December 2003: Lots of banging and hammering and knocking down of walls on level 300, presumably to house a wave of NASSP Honours students in 2004.
• 23 October 2003: Phenomenal Physics, the afternoon of fun physics demonstrations to the school kids goes off (phenomenally) well. Leigh stars, as always.
• 7 August 2003: A/Prof Saalih Allie departs on a two month visit to USA and UK/Europe.
• 6 August 2003: An eminent professor of physics demonstrates the current in an RC circuit as the capacitor charges up .. "the light bulb will now be seen to dim as the voltage across the capacitor becomes equal to that across the battery..." .... but the light bulb keeps on shining brightly! Amusement and consternation result.
• 5 August 2003: Dr. Roland Romain is spending the month of August here from CEA (Saclay) in France - his field of interest is nuclear energy in France, and the South African Pebble Bed Reactor.
• 4 August 2003: Richard Kahle (BSc with distinction in Physics (and other subjects) has received a Mandela Scholarship for study at Cambridge. Congratulations!
• 3 August 2003: Mark Horner (PhD student) is back after a long trip abroad. Welcome back Mark [sorry :( about the state of Griquas rugby]
• 14 July 2003: Also welcome to Dr Rudolph Nchodu (he got a UCT PhD in experimental nuclear physics last year). He has taken time off from his job at UWC Physics to lecture PHY123H here this semester.
• 14 July 2003: A/Prof Steve Driver, who retired at the end of last year, is back lecturing electromagnetism to the engineers in PHY210S.
• 14 July 2003: Gregor Leigh (Cape Technikon) will spend six months at UCT on sabbatical. He will lecture electricity in PHY110W, and will work on his MSC in physics education, supervised by Dr Andy Buffler.
• 31 June 2003: Don Ball steps down as Deputy-HoD after five years of sterling service, during which the internal affairs of the Physics department ran remarkably smoothly. Well done Don!
• 26 June 2003: The usual northward migration of physicists over the mid-winter vacation begins.
• May 2003. Nadrah Lovric, the new Departmental Administrator, is in place, and the ship of UCT physics sails on with stability.
• 1 April 2003: Life without LeeAnne begins.
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• 24 December 2002: LeeAanne Kallam, the Departmental Administrator, announces she is accepting a job in the Engineering Faculty.
• December 2002: Visits from: the Hempel twins - now being reformed into astronomers, they look pretty happy; Sahal Yacoob studying for PhD at Northwestern U, but his karate skills are slipping.
• 00 December 2002: Rory Adams wins a prestigous NRF bursary which will fund his PhD!
• 12 December 2002: Graduation: PhD for Rudolph Nchodu! MSc for Mark Horner and Bruce Becker. Well done all!
• 10 December 2002: Party to mark the retirement of Steve Driver, who has been at UCT since his student days in the early sixties. But there seems to be enough money to get him to continue lecturing PHY210S next year.
• December 2002 - much banging and drilling and knocking down of walls to create the new Scilab space on level 400.
• 00 November 2002: Dr Margit Haerting is promoted ad-hominem to Associate Professor. Congratulations!
• 20 November 2002: Dr Mike Osiele, a lecturer at the Federal University of Technology Akure, Nigeria, has joined the department as a post-doctoral fellow in solid state physics. Welcome Mike!
• 18 November 2002: Prof Steinberg connects the UCT Physics ALICE group to the grid...
• 8 November 2002: Dr Andy Buffler wins a UCT distinguished teaching award. Congratulations!
• 16 August 2002: Nick van Eijndhoven from Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht is visiting the Physics Department for a couple of weeks. Welcome!
• 5 August 2002: Dr Peter Steinberg arrives as Fullbright fellow to join the UCT-Alice group for six months. Welcome Peter!
• 28 June 2002: Professor Jean Cleymans took over from Professor David Aschman as Head of Physics. With the Dean as guest, a celebratory tea marked the occasion, and best wishes were bestowed on Jean.
• 21 June 2002: At the June graduation, MSc degrees in Physics are awarded to Mecit Yaman and Tshepo Ntsoane, and Sahal Yacoob (soon to go to Northwestern) gets his MSc in Theoretical Physics.
• 22 May 2002: The Physics seminar room (the old tea room) was named the Duncan Elliott Seminar Room.
• 10 May 2002: The research work of the UCT-CERN Alice experimental group, led by Professor Jean Cleymans (with Drs Fearick and Vilakazi) gets a full page writeup in the Cape Argus.
• 29 April 2002: Unveiling the Universe's Genesis is the title of the UCT Monday Paper article describing the work of Prof Cleymans and his group.
• 20 April 2002: The STRESS (South African Team for Research and Exploration of Strain and Stress) group led by Dr Margit Haerting carries out research into the nature of materials.
• 23 March 2002: Cambridge University (where is that?) confer a PhD degree in Physics on Rudzani Nemutudi, who had done an MSc in solid state physics with Professor Craig Comrie, and had gone to Cambridge as a Mandela scholar.
• 15 February 2002: Start of the 2002 academic year. Flat floor space is ready for the first class. PHYLAB3 is up and running on level 200.
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• 18/12/01: The banging starts - as the builders knock down walls to convert the old third year Physics laboratory into a flat floor teaching space in which 120 students can be tutored in small groups, this being the current fad in science education. PHYLAB3 will take over space in PHYLAB2 on level 200.
• 15/12/01: Nceba Mhlahlo (MSc in Physics in 1999) wins a scholarship to carry out PhD study in England.
• 12/12/01: A drinks party in the Frahn Library marks the early retirement of Gerald Robertson. He has been at UCT Physics since 1971. As Emeritus Associate Professor he will continue his research in laser diagnostics of combustion using a grant from the South Africa-Sweden scientific agreement.
• 12/12/01: At the UCT Science Faculty graduation (12 December 2001) degrees were granted to the following:
  • PhD: Kevin Meyer for a thesis entitled " ..." (solid state physics, supervised by A/Prof Craig Comrie)
  • PhD: David Roux for a thesis entitled "Signature Splitting and Non-Axiality in the Nuclei Ta-164 and Ta-165" (experimental nuclear physics, supervised by Prof DG Aschman (UCT) and Dr E G-Lawrie(NAC-iThembaLabs)
  • MSc in Physics: M Kubeka
  • MSc in Theoretical Physics: Spencer Wheaton
  • BSc(Hons) in Physics
  • BSc(Hons) in Theoretical Physics
  • BSc(Hons) in Mathematical and Theoretical Physics: Bonita de Swardt
  • BSc (Physics)
• 23/10/01: Phenomenal Physics Schools Day - 300 students packed lecture theatre James A for an afternoon of physics demonstrations from Andy Buffler, Saalih Allie, Gregor Leigh, David Aschman, C Rysdyck, Steve Driver, Zeblon Vilakazi and Trevor Volkwyn.
• 06/09/01: Spring(?) break at end of third quarter: several physicists flee north for conferences, whilst the rest shiver in a cold and wet Cape Town....
• 10/08/01: Dr Pedro Lemos, a nuclear physicist from Angola is visiting the department for six weeks.
• 16/7/01: Dr Ilham Al Qaradawi from Qatar visits the solid-state positron group for 7 weeks, while her colleaque Ms Mona el Shobki is a new MSc student (supervisor A/Prof D Britton)
• Professor Manfred Drosg, a nuclear physicist from Vienna, visited for a week (16/7/01)
• At the 2001 South African Institute of Physics Conference in Durban, the prizes for the best student papers/posters in nuclear physics went to Given Mabala (PhD student), and Bruce Becker (MSc student). Well done!
• The annual physics department five-a-side soccer tournament took place on 26 April. Trevor Volkwyn led the Academic Development team to victory (Applied Mathematics were crushed!). Denis Elliott presented to him the Duncan Elliott Memorial Cup, which Professor Raoul Viollier donated in the memory of Duncan Elliott.
• Dr Sinclair Wynchank, who was senior lecturer in Physics at UCT in the seventies, returns to lecture part-time to the PHY108F (first year medical students) class. He has a training in both nuclear physics and medicine, and has a senior position in medical physics at the Medical Research Council.
• April 2001: The department offers condolences to the family of Ray Godfrey Christians, who died in April 2001. Godfrey worked at UCT from 1959 to 1994, being the departmental assistant in charge of the first year laboratory. Thousands of physics students benefitted from the smooth and reliable way that Godfrey, and others, helped to run this lab. Godfrey's son, Mark, now does this job.
• Professor Jean Cleymans was one of three physicists who won a prize of R20000 from the Polish Ministry of Education for their work on the theoretical interpretation of heavy ion collisions. Two years ago he won the Humboldt Research Prize in theoretical high-energy physics.
• April 2001: Amanda Weltman (BSc(Hons) in Theoretical Physics, UCT 2000) is going to Columbia for PhD study; Anne Dabrowski (BSc(Hons) in Physics, UCT 2000) is at Northwestern University, Chicago, doing graduate study.
• April 2001: At the ICFA2001 International School on Instrumentation in High Energy Physics, held at the National Accelerator Centre, Faure, March 27 - April 6, 2001, David Aschman, Roger Fearick and Zeblon Vilakazi ran a demonstration experiment to measure the muon lifetime.
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• December 2000: UCT Science Faculty Graduation, 13 December 2000, saw the following physics students graduate:
  • MSc in Physics: Nceba Mhlahlo (thesis "Feasibility of using the Afrodite Hp-Ge detectors as Compton polarimeters" supervised by Dr Roger Fearick).
  • BSc(Honours) in Physics: A Dabrowski, T Thovhogi.
  • BSc(Honours) in Theoretical Physics: N Goheer (*), M Mueller(*), A Weltman(*). (* = with distinction)
  • BSc with Physics: B De Swardt, J Harnmeijer(*), V McBride(*), A Qin, N Razak. (* = with distinction in Physics)
• December 2000: Mirela and Remus Fetea (both with PhD degrees in theoretical physics from UCT) have left for the USA
• November 2000: Linux course - Dr Roger Fearick gave a 3 day "Introduction to Scientific Computing using Linux" course to about 30 students and staff of UCT Physics, and the National Accelerator Centre. Linux runs on the 24 computers in Phylab1 (the first year lab).
• November 2000: Emeritus Associate Professor John Juritz turned 80! Congratulations and best wishes from the Physics Department!
• July 2000: The UCT Physics Department pays tribute to the memory of Duncan Elliott (1964 - 2000), tragically killed in a climbing accident in Peru. His friends have setup a Duncan Elliott website that contains tributes, memories and pictures
• Nceba Mhlahlo wins prize for best MSc presentation at SAIP2000 conference
• Andy Buffler demonstrates the Cartesian diver at open day for schools.
• Physics launches new undergraduate curriculum in Physics of Engineering Materials.
• UCT physics graduate directs giant US 'particle smasher'. Professor Jonathan Dorfan, who graduated with a BSc degree in Physics and Applied Mathematics from UCT in 1969, was appointed as the third Director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre (SLAC) at the end of 1998.
• Faculty Highlights - A Venda hat-trick
• Mandela Scholar - UCT Physics M.Sc. graduate Rudzani Nemutudi wins prestigious Cambridge scholarship to study for a Ph.D. at the Cavendish Laboratory.
• SLOPOS-8 - Physicists review latest in positron research.
• WIN 99 - Physicists gather to review neutrino research