List of University of the Witwatersrand people

This is a list of notable alumni and staff of the University of the Witwatersrand.

Arts

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Architecture and design

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Business and entrepreneurship

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  • Adam Levy, property developer
  • Adrian Gore, CEO of Discovery Holdings Ltd; Chairman of Destiny Health Inc. in the USA and Prudential Health Limited in the UK
  • Affiong Williams, founder and CEO of Reel Fruit, a Nigerian company that focuses on processing and distribution of locally grown fruits
  • Bridget van Kralingen, Senior Vice President, IBM Global Business Services
  • Charles Chinedu Okeahalam, economist and businessman, CEO of AGH Capital Group; former Liberty Life Professor of Financial Economics and Banking, University of the Witwatersrand
  • David Frankel (entrepreneur), is a South African-born American businessman. He is the co-founder of Founder Collective, a seed-stage venture capital fund with offices in New York City and Cambridge
  • Derek Keys (born 1931), finance minister of South Africa, 1992-1994, in the cabinets of F W de Klerk and Nelson Mandela
  • Desmond Lachman (born 1948), economist and former IMF Deputy Director
  • Donald Gordon, founder of life insurance company Liberty Life in 1958 with R100,000 when he was 27 years old; awarded a knighthood in 2005
  • Elizabeth Bradley, Non-Executive Chairman of Toyota SA Limited; former Executive Director of AngloGold
  • Gail Kelly (born Gail Currer), Australian and South African businessperson; first woman CEO of a major Australian bank or top 15 company (2002)
  • Gary Barber, Chairman and CEO of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Bachelor of Commerce; certificate in the Theory of Accountancy
  • Gene Sherman, philanthropist, academic and expert on art, fashion and architecture.
  • Gordon Schachat, co-founder of African Bank Limited and prominent art collector
  • Graham Mackay, former Chairman and Ex-CEO of SABMiller plc, the world's second largest beer brewer
  • Ivan Glasenberg, CEO of Glencore, one of the world's largest commodity trading companies; on the boards of mining companies Xstrata plc and Minara Resources Ltd
  • Koos Bekker, former CEO of Naspers
  • Lael Bethlehem, former CEO of the Johannesburg Development Agency; Investment Executive at Hosken Consolidated Investments
  • Ludwig Lachmann, economist and important contributor to the Austrian School
  • Maria Ramos, economist and businesswoman; CEO of ABSA Group since 2009; former CEO of Transnet
  • Martin Morgan, Chief Executive Officer and Director of DMGT
  • Meyer Feldberg, Senior Advisor to Morgan Stanley
  • Nathan Kirsh, South African-born Swazi business magnate, with a property empire spanning the UK, Swaziland and Australia; has Swazi citizenship; has residency status in the UK and the USA
  • Nthato Motlana, giant of South African business and the anti-apartheid struggle; one of the accused, with Mandela and 18 others, in the 1952 Defiance Campaign Trial
  • Patrice Motsepe, South African mining magnate; according to Forbes magazine, worth more than R17-billion after adding a further R7-billion to his net worth in 2009
  • Patrick Soon-Shiong, South African-American surgeon; founder, chairman, and CEO of Abraxis BioScience
  • Percy Tucker, Founder of Computicket, the first electronic theatre booking system in the world in 1971
  • Rodney Sacks, chairman, and CEO of Monster Beverage
  • Ron Dembo, is an academic and entrepreneur
  • Ronnie Apteker, founder of Internet Solutions, one of South Africa's largest internet service providers
  • Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, diamond and gold mining entrepreneur; financier; philanthropist; controlled De Beers; founded the Anglo American Corporation of South Africa
  • Sir Mark Weinberg, South African-born British financier; founder of Abbey Life Assurance Company
  • Sir Winfried Franz Wilhem Bischoff, Anglo-German banker; chairman of Lloyds Banking Group plc; former chairman and former interim CEO of Citigroup; knighted in 2000
  • Sol Kerzner, hotel and gambling magnate; created the most successful hotel group in South Africa, Sun International; Chairman of the Board of Kerzner International, based in the Bahamas
  • Steven H. Collis, CEO of Cencora (previously AmerisourceBergen);
  • Tony Trahar, former chairman of Anglo American; educated at St John's College and the University of the Witwatersrand

Education

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Engineering

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  • John Burland,[1] is an Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Investigator at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Imperial College London.[2]
  • Lewis Wolpert,[1] was a South African-born British developmental biologist, author, and broadcaster
  • Michael Bear (lord mayor),[1] is a civil engineer and management leader in both the construction and property industries in the UK and abroad
  • Rob Pullen,[1] major contributor to the practice of water resources engineering and especially to the wider engineering profession in South Africa
  • Matthew Rabinowitz, is a doctor of engineering and co-founder and executive chairman of Natera, a clinical genetic testing company
  • Sir Jack Zunz,[1] was a British civil engineer and former chairman of Ove Arup & Partners. He was the principal structural designer of the Sydney Opera House
  • Trevor Wadley, was a South African electrical engineer, best known for his development of the Wadley Loop circuit for greater stability in communications receivers and the Tellurometer, a land surveying device.
  • Jules Fejer was an engineer with South Africa's National Institute for Telecommunications Research (NITR), He published the first estimate of the life expectancy of the recently launched Sputnik in Nature.

Historians

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4 May 2009: Beric Croome was keynote speaker for the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) graduation ceremony for the students of the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management. Photograph shows from left to right: Acting Vice-Chancellor Y. Ballim; Beric Croome; David Kolitz, President of the Convocation of the University of the Witwatersrand.

Medicine

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  • Alan Menter (MBBCh, 1966, Wits), dermatologist; expert on psoriasis; Chairman of the Division of Dermatology; Director of the Dermatology Residency program for Baylor University Medical Center; Clinical Professor of Dermatology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School
  • Basil Hirschowitz, inventor of the first fiberoptic endoscope
  • Catherine Nyongesa, radiation oncologist
  • Glenda Gray, President of the South African Medical Research Council, pediatrician
  • Helen Rees, is a medical doctor, and the founder and Executive Director of Wits RHI
  • Irma Brenman Pick, psychoanalyst
  • Jack Penn, known for his innovative techniques in plastic surgery, notably the Brenthurst splint
  • James Ware, surgeon
  • John Brereton Barlow - Barlow's syndrome
  • Jonathan Lewis, surgical oncologist; biomedical researcher; developer of cancer drugs[3]
  • Joseph Sonnabend, physician, scientist and HIV/AIDS researcher, notable for pioneering community-based research, the propagation of safe sex to prevent infection, and an early multifactorial model of AIDS.
  • Julien Hoffman, paediatric cardiologist; cardiac physiologist; expert in the epidemiology of congenital cardiovascular malformations
  • Lars Georg Svensson, cardiac surgeon
  • Lionel Hersov, child psychiatrist, researcher and academic
  • Mary Malahlela, first black woman doctor in South Africa
  • Nandipha Magudumana, medical practitioner and celebrity doctor incarcerated and investigated for aiding a fugitive's prison escape
  • Norman E. Rosenthal, author, psychiatrist and scientist who in the 1980s first described seasonal affective disorder (SAD), and pioneered the use of light therapy for its treatment
  • Nthatho Harrison Motlana, activist, academic, businessman, Mandela family physician
  • Phillip Tobias, palaeoanthropologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg; known for his work at South Africa's hominid fossil sites; anti-apartheid activist
  • Priscilla Kincaid-Smith, "the mother of nephrology", appointed Commander of The Order of the British Empire (Civil) in 1975, for services to medicine; appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia; first woman to become President of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (1986–1988); won Australian Achiever Award in 1997 for a lifetime's work in renal health
  • Raymond Dart, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, 1925-1943, the longest term of service in that capacity; announced the discovery of the Taung skull, the first of Africa's early hominids, and named the species Australopithecus Africanus
  • Rhian Touyz, MBBCh, MSc (Med), PhD, FRCP, FRSE,[1] FMedSci, FCAHS[2] is a Canadian medical researcher
  • Salome Maswime, obstetrician-gynecologist, global health expert and activist
  • Saul Levin, U.S.-based psychiatrist
  • Selig Percy Amoils, Inventor of the Cryoprobe, recipient of the silver Order of Mapungubwe in 2006
  • Shereen Usdin, public health specialist
  • Sir Terence English, cardiac surgeon who performed the first successful heart transplant in the UK in 1979
  • Sydney Brenner, biologist; 2002 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, shared with H. Robert Horvitz and John Sulston
  • Sylvia Weir, pioneered the use of robotics in autism therapy
  • William Harding le Riche, epidemiologist; established the first non-segregated health centre in Knysna

Politics and public service

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Science and technology

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Sir Aaron Klug, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1982

Sports

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Miscellaneous

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d e "Distinguished graduates". School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand. Retrieved 9 July 2018.
  2. ^ "Christopher John Robert Dugard | Honorary Degree Citations | Alumni Awards | About Alumni | Alumni - Wits University". Archived from the original on 24 June 2013. Retrieved 25 June 2013.
  3. ^ "Jonathan Lewis, MD, PhD". WebMD.
  4. ^ "WATCH LIVE: Zondo Inquiry hears Sars related evidence from Athol Williams".
  5. ^ "WATCH LIVE | Former partner at Bain SA continues testimony about Sars at state capture inquiry".
  6. ^ "Zondo inquiry may force Bain to answer questions".
  7. ^ "Memorial, Friedel Sellschop". www.src.wits.ac.za.
  8. ^ "de_Blij_Harm | AAG". www.aag.org.