This was announced by Profs Hendrik Geyer (Interim Director of NITheP, the National Institute for Theoretical Physics), Fritz Hahne (Director of AIMS, the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences) and Neil Turok, Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge and Chair of the AIMS Council.

Turok, co-author of the popular science book Endless Universe and winner of the 2008 international TED prize for his role as “cosmologist and education activist” was instrumental in securing the participation of Hawking, Gross, Smoot and Griffin in two inauguration events on 12 and 13 May 2008.

Science and Technology Minister Mr Mosibudi Mangena, whose department has been central to the establishment and funding of two new research centres, will deliver the opening addresses on these occasions.

The first event will launch the  AIMS Research Centre which is an important extension to the  already  highly successful postgraduate training programme in the mathematical sciences, now boasting an annual intake of about 50 students from all over Africa and a corps of local and international lecturers from many eminent institutions.

Hawking, Smoot and Griffin  are scheduled to give  public lectures at the Muizenberg Pavilion (near AIMS) on the evening of 11 May 2008. Details of ticket sales for attendance will be announced later.

The launch of NITheP, the establishment of which had been announced by Minister Mangena in 2005, will take place at the new Wallenberg Research Centre of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS). NITheP is a geographically distributed institute which also has regional centres at the Universities of KwaZulu-Natal and the Witwatersrand.

It is being positioned as a national and African user facility for theoretical physics and will provide theoretical underpinning for current national programmes including astrophysics, cosmology, nuclear and particle physics, quantum technologies, condensed matter physics and quantum optics. 

The launching event will be followed by a three day workshop co-hosted by AIMS, NITheP, STIAS and the Newton Institute at Cambridge. It will focus on international developments in theoretical physics, and on state of the art cosmology in particular.

This event and the subsequent research programmes at AIMS and NITheP, which will include a focus on cosmology, are seen as significant developments in South Africa’s science programme in general, and for its cosmology and astrophysics programmes in particular.

These programmes are intended to make significant contributions to the  SALT programme, centred around the Southern Africa Large Telescope at Sutherland, and the announced MeerKAT programme which will establish a significant new radio telescope facility in the Karoo.

All of these developments should strengthen South Africa’s bid to host the $1 billion Square Kilometer Array (SKA) programme for which the country is now competing with Australia, the only other remaining finalist for this internationally funded radio telescope project.

Together the two new research centres will open up many new opportunities for development of the mathematical and physical sciences in South Africa and on the African continent.

Contact details for further information:

Prof Hendrik Geyer: tel (021) 808 3658; e-mail hbg@sun.ac.za

Nhlanhla Nyide: tel: (021) 843 6793; email Nhlanhla.nyide@dst.gov.za

Prof Fritz Hahne: tel (021) 787 9332; e-mail fjwh@aims.ac.za

Prof Neil Turok: tel  (0044) 1223 337872 ; e-mail N.G.Turok@damtp.cam.ac.uk