Colleen Dawson
reviews
Enquiring minds
by Albie van de Venter
(R69,95, Briza Publications)
Science is the learning area currently being emphasised as a gateway to higher education, employment and the development of our country. Yet there are few well-known role models for school pupils of working scientists.
Enquiring Minds introduces 20 South African scientists. The
scientists become real and accessible people, who are illustrated not just working in a variety of scientific fields, but also as ordinary people dancing with family and having a braai with friends. Lively accounts of their lives and work make for easy reading.
The scientists described work in a variety of scientific and mathematical fields. Sakkie Pretorius is the director of wine biotechnology at the University of Stellenbosch. Kingston Nyampfene is a soil scientist.
Others represented are spider scientists, palaeontologists, archaeologists, astronomers, mathematicians, medical doctors, chemists, and government agricultural planners. The wide variety of careers portrayed is an excellent career guidance course in one book.
Articles in the book include:
– Down came a spider (Dr Ansie Dippenaar),
– Bones of contention (Professor Phillip Tobias),
– Teas and Tannins (Professor Daneel Ferreira),
– From micro to macro (Dr Khotso Mokhele),
– Twinkle, twinkle little star (Dr Patricia Whitelock),
– ‘Pharming” for people (Professor Kanti Bhoola),
– New technology for an ancient art (Profesor Sakkie Pretorius),
– Cottoning on to carnivores (Dr Gus Mills),
– y = a + bx (Professor Niko Sauer),
– TB or not TB (Professor Valerie Mizrahi),
– Science and the communication revolution (Dr Sibusiso Sibisi).
Although the book is now four years old, most of the scientists are still living and working in South Africa. Men and women are represented and people from a variety of racial backgrounds. Most learners in Grade 9 or 10 who are choosing matric subjects would be able to find a role model among the scientists.
Enquiring Minds deserves to be widely circulated among high schools. I would love to see a book like this produced every year to highlight those young South Africans who have chosen science beyond matric. I hope the publishers are considering publishing Enquiring Minds 2, and in a format that makes it accessible to those who would benefit most from it — high school learners who still have time to make choices about their future as scientists.