Professor Friedel Sellschop, a world leader in the field of nuclear physics died peacefully at his Johannesburg home on Sunday, the University of the Witwatersrand said.
In a media statement on Monday the university said the
72-year-old emeritus professor’s most remarkable nuclear discovery was the first proof of the existence of the neutrino — a sub-atomic particle — in nature.
University representative Martha Molete said Sellschop was equally well known for pioneering the field of diamond physics. He exploited the unique properties of the nearly perfect diamond lattice to produce and study the highest energy photons ever
generated in a laboratory.
Sellschop thought of a diamond as a ”messenger from the deep”.
This poetic description is apt because a diamond is a chemical and physical ”prison” for material from the earth’s mantle 200km below the surface and from 2,5-billion years ago when the diamond was formed.
Sellschop and collaborators unwrapped the hidden geochemical secrets contained in diamonds, known as inclusions.
His later research was into diamonds’ high tech applications.
Although he officially retired in 1996 he never stopped working, and had nine patent applications registered at the time of his death.
Born in Luderitz, in what is now Namibia, in 1930, he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree by the University of Pretoria, a Master of Science by the University of Stellenbosch, and a PhD in
nuclear physics by the University of Cambridge.
In 1956 he was the founding director of the Nuclear Physics Research Unit which is today the Schonland Research Institute at Wits University. He later became the first holder of a chair in nuclear physics in South Africa. His numerous positions at Wits
included Dean of the Faculty of Science and later deputy vice-chancellor of research from 1984 to 1996.
He was a past president of the Royal Society of South Africa, and the South African Institute of Physics, and was scientific adviser to Arts, Culture, Science and Technology Minister Ben Ngubane.
Sellschop leaves his wife Sue, his sons Richard and Jacques and daughters Ingrid and Celia. – Sapa