This book is an autobiography/memoir of a South African scientist and academic leader who honestly explores the inter-relation between professional/public and private life, revealing what happens to a person’s inner being and family as a career unfolds over a lifetime. It shows how chance and opportunity affect such a life, how the elusive qualities responsible for repeated survival and success can be retrospectively identified, with lessons for the young and hopeful who might wish to tread on a similar path.
The story also maps onto the country’s history, by including crucial aspects of the closely linked spheres of higher education, research and scholarship in both the protagonist’s home country, South Africa and some of the strongest centres in Britain and America. It describes the life-path of an individual citizen who sought to change, and in some key instances did change, the basic workings of higher education and research as the country went through the post-apartheid transition. The author developed a special interest and skill in building new institutions such as the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) and a number of highly successful research institutes and consortia in a changing country. The major part of the book amounts to a concise history of higher education and research in the democratic era in SA, but, unusually, readers of the book will be able to see into many aspects of workings that are usually hidden from the public gaze, yet may significantly affect their own lives or those of their communities. The story of a love-marriage impacted by prolonged health tragedy is fully interwoven with the professional narrative in a completely open and telling manner.
It is the authors’ belief that a diverse market for such an autobiography/memoir exists in South Africa and possibly abroad. There are few ‘warts and all’ memoirs in this domain, and few understand how scientists and university leaders function as people in their apparently uncomplicated ‘white-coated’ or ‘ivory tower’ public lives.
About the author
Preface
Acknowledgements
Chapter One: Boyhood in Piet Retief
Chapter Two: Youth on the Witwatersrand
Chapter Three: Student in Cape Town
Chapter Four: Maturing in In Oxford
Chapter Five: Scientist in New York
Chapter Six: Finding feet: Stellenbosch University
Chapter Seven: Alma Mater: UCT
Chapter Eight: UCT: Academic Administration
Chapter Nine: A new National Academy and a new UCT Research Institute
Chapter Ten: Contributing further to the National System of Innovation
Chapter Eleven: The long look back
Index
Wieland Gevers was born in Piet Retief, South Africa, in 1937. He qualified in Medicine with First Class Honours at the University of Cape Town in 1960 and proceeded as a Rhodes Scholar to Oxford University to obtain the DPhil degree in 1966 under the Nobel Prize-winner, Sir Hans Krebs (regulation of liver metabolism). He subsequently spent four postdoctoral years as a Helen Hay Whitney Fellow and Research Associateinthelaboratory of another Nobelist, Dr Fritz Lipmann, at the Rockefeller University in New York (biosynthesis of peptide antibiotics) before returning to South Africa in 1970.
Gevers was Professor of Medical Biochemistry at Stellenbosch University from 1971 to 1977, and the same at UCTs since 1978. He was (founder) President of the South Africa Biochemical Society (later the South African Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, SASBMB) from 1975-6, and again President from 1981-2. He was President of the Royal Society of South Africa from 1987—1989. He was the main driver behind the establishment of the Academy of Science of South Africa from 1990 onwards, and was its President from 1998 to 2004, then Executive Officer (2004-2008) and finally General Secretary (2008-2010). He was elected Fellow of the World Academy of Sciences of the Developing World, TWAS in 2002, served as chair of the TRWAS Committee on Medical Sciences from 2012 to 2014, and was the recipient of a TWASGoldMedal Lecture Award in 2009. He was Acting Chairperson of the Education Committee of the SouthAfricanUniversities’ Vice-Chancellors Association during 2001-2, and represented all South African universities South African Qualifications Authority from 1996-2002. He holds a Distinguished Teacher’s Award and Life Fellowship from the University of Cape Town. He founded what is now called the Cape Higher Education Consortium (CHEC) in 1991, and helped establish the regional library system CALICO in 1995. GeverswasSenior Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Provost-equivalent) responsible for planning and academic process at the University of Cape Town from 1992 to 2002; during his tenure, the institution was extensively reorganised, and a new postgraduate system introduced.
Gevers directed MRC Research Units at both the University of Stellenbosch (1970-1977) and CapeTown(1979-1994), using biochemical, cell-biological and molecular genetic approaches to muscle fatigue, heart contractility, intracellular protein turnover and cholesterol metabolism. After his formal retirement from UCT at the end of 2002, Prof Gevers took up an appointment until 31 March 2005 as the (founding) InterimDirector of UCT’s Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine (IIDMM), now the biggest research enterprise at UCT.
Gevers has been awarded the Wellcome Gold Medal for Medical Research and the Gold Medals of the South African Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the South African MRC and the SouthernAfricanAssociation for the Advancement of Science. In 2004, Gevers was given the National ScienceandTechnology Forum’s ‘Achievements as an Individual over a Lifetime’ Award, in 2006 the MT SteynMedal of the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns in 2006, and in 2997 the South Africa Medal of theSouthern African Association for the Advancement of Science. He was awarded a Gold Medal for meritorious service by the Academy of Science of South Africa in 2008, as well as the national Order of MapungubweinSilver by the President of South Africa. Gevers was Deputy Chair and principal drafter of the 2012 Ministerial Review Committee Report on the ‘Science, Technology and Innovation Landscape’ of South Africa. He has chaired the external review panels for the National Advisory Council on Innovation, NACI (2003), the NRF (2005), and the MRC in 2010 and 2017. He has also reviewed in detail the research activities and postgraduate programmes at the Health Sciences Faculties of the Universities of both Stellenbosch and Cape Town.
Endorsements
“What makes this book interesting for publication—compared to similar ones in the genre–is the ways in which it weaves together science, romance, career, family and higher education. The narrative thread that holds together these seemingly disparate threads is personal vulnerability; that is, how you share, courageously I thought, the constant uncertainties of personal capability (can I live up to the standard), of family health and of choices about occupation and indeed location (Cape Town or Toronto or Australia etc.). It is the felt sense of vulnerability throughout the book that makes this compelling reading, and what makes this account of your life even more fascinating is that you more than hint at the origins of some of those uncertainties for both you and Lizzie. “ Jonathan Jansen (Distinguished Professor of Education, Stellenbosch University) “The book is moving, filled with gems and hopefully it is being read by our colleagues, both former and those still at UCT. I was roaring with laughter at your description of the office window crash which nearly killed Sidney Brenner.” Milton Shain (Professor Milton Shain. Emeritus Professor of History, UCT).
