/ 17 September 2003

SA’s first prize for female scientists

On Friday night four women will be acknowledged in the country’s first Distinguished Woman Scientist Award. The winner will walk away with R50 000.

The four finalists include:

  • Professor Esté Vorster, who directs preventative and therapeutic nutritional interventions at Potchefstroom University. She is the force behind a global conference on nutrition, to be held for the first time in sub-Saharan Africa in 2005. When last year’s World Summit agreed to halve death from malnutrition by the end of the decade, as well as tackle dangerous vitamin A deficiencies and fight anaemia, it fell to people such as Vorster to turn this into reality.

  • University of Cape Town (UCT) Professor Zephne van der Spuy, the first woman to head an obstetrics and gynaecology department at a local university. She studied medicine at Stellenbosch. As an endocrinologist she has a special interest in how hormones affect people.

    She is involved in a international project examining people’s attitudes towards contraception, as well as combating infertility and making abortions safer. Van der Spuy is president of the College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of South Africa.

  • Biotechnologist Professor Jennifer Thomson is a scientist and author best known in the non-scientific community for her cautious advocacy of genetically-modified foods. She has argued that Africa must use new technology when and if it suits its needs rather than be dictated to by European concerns or other small, unelected advocacy groups following their own agendas. She is a professor at the department of molecular and cell biology at UCT.

  • Professor Vanessa Watson may not be considered by hardline scientists to qualify as a finalist. She is an authority on housing and urban renewal and works at the UCT department of architecture and planning.

    Watson is responsible for linking 15 universities across sub-Saharan Africa through the creation of the Association of African Planning Schools, and is in talks with the World Bank on the issue of a pan-African, university-level training programme in urban renewal.