WITSIE WITH THE EDGE

Professor Saul Teukolsky [BSc 1969, BSc Hons 1970]

2021 Dirac Medal and Prize

Professor Saul Teukolsky (BSc 1969, BSc Hons 1970) was awarded the 2021 Dirac Medal and Prize by the International Centre for Theoretical Physics for his contributions in predicting the properties of gravitational waves that emerge from the collisions of black holes.

He received the prize jointly with Alessandra Buonanno of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Germany; Thibault Damour of the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies in France; and Frans Pretorius of Princeton University in New Jersey.

The Dirac Medal, which was first awarded in 1985, is given in honour of the Nobel laureate Paul Dirac, who made fundamental contributions to quantum physics.

Professor Teukolsky matriculated from Selborne College in East London and completed his undergraduate and postgraduate science degrees in mathematics and physics at Wits.

“I have very warm memories of Wits,” Professor Teukolsky says via email. “I had caring lecturers like Eddie Price (BSc Eng 1936) and Prof Frank Nabarro (DSc honoris causa 1987), the head of the Physics Department. I made many friends, especially living in the Men’s Residence. One particular memory is of afternoon tea in the Res right before exams. One of the medical students rushed in and yelled to a group of fellow students: ‘Have you studied the liver? I haven’t looked at that part yet, and I don’t have any time left!’ I always wondered what happened to his patients.”

He shares that he met his wife, Roselyn, née Siew, (BSc 1969) at Wits: “My wife was from Port Elizabeth and so staying in Women’s Res, and we met through the various social events organised for the first years. Her maiden name began with S and in first-year chemistry we were arranged alphabetically at the lab benches. Since I was with the Ts, I could look across at her often. Things just seemed to follow from there.” The couple recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Roselyn graduated from Cornell University with a master’s in mathematical education and was an accomplished mathematics and computer science teacher. In her retirement, she’s pursuing her talent as a fiction writer.

Professor Teukolsky is the Robinson Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology as well as a professor at Cornell University. In the early 2000s, he created a group for simulating the collisions of black holes using Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, and he has led it ever since. He is a co-author of the widely used textbooks "Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific Computing and Black Holes", "White Dwarfs and Neutron Stars: The Physics of Compact Objects".

His list of honours also includes membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He said he couldn’t pinpoint the factors that sparked his interest in science. “It’s always been really satisfying to me that we have a way of understanding the world around us that doesn’t involve supernatural things. It can also be very beautiful when things fit together in an unexpected way.”

This year he also received the American Physical Society’s Einstein Prize, but wishes it could have somehow improved his golf: “I’m a keen golfer, though not very good. You’d think that knowing physics would be helpful for golf. But I’ve found that if I think about physics while swinging a golf club I play much worse.”

Image: Caltech