Professor George Ellis: a man of many parts
March 18, 2004 Edition 1
Donal Lehr
George F R Ellis has pursued rigorous scientific research into cosmology with the same doggedness he has brought to social activism, offering him a perspective that has advanced his career as a theoretical cosmologist, thrust him to a position of leadership as a humanitarian, and made him a trusted voice in the science and religion dialogue.
Born in 1939 to George Rayner Ellis, a newspaper editor, and Gwendoline Hilda MacRobert Ellis in Johannesburg, George Francis Rayner Ellis attended the University of Cape Town, where he graduated with honours in 1960 with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics with distinction. He represented the university in fencing, rowing and flying.
While a student at Cambridge University, where he received a PhD. in applied maths and theoretical physics in 1964, he was on college rowing teams.
At Cambridge, Ellis served as a research fellow from 1965 to 1967, was assistant lecturer in the department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics until 1970, and was then appointed university lecturer, serving until 1974.
Ellis rapidly established himself within academic circles, becoming a visiting professor at the Enrico Fermi Institute
at the University of Chicago in 1970, a lecturer at the Cargese Summer School in Corsica in 1971 and the Erice Summer School in Sicily in 1972, and a visiting H3 professor at the University of Hamburg, also in 1972.
The following year, Ellis co-wrote The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time with Stephen Hawking, debuting at a strategic moment in the development of General Relativity Theory.
The following year, Ellis returned to South Africa to accept an appointment as Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town, a position he continues to hold.
Coming home to South Africa also brought Ellis back to the barbarous system of apartheid that created a racially divided populace lorded over by a white minority.
Though his parents were atheists, Ellis grew up immersed in the youth activities of the Anglican Church. By the time he returned to South Africa in 1974, however, the injustice of the political system helped draw Ellis to the Society of Friends.
His activism found an outlet in 1977 when Ellis and three colleagues released The Squatter Problem in the Western Cape, a plea for the rights of homeless people and for a new social policy to help them.
Some years later, Ellis co-wrote Low Income Housing Policy in South Africa, a comprehensive analysis of how to transform the desperate housing situation of the nation's oppressed majority.
The book later helped influence a renewed national housing policy.
With a fervour equal to his social work, Ellis also pursued his cosmological inquiries, writing or co-writing Flat and Curved Space Times (1988), The Dynamical Systems Approach to Cosmology (1996), and Is the Universe Open or Closed? The Density of Matter in the Universe (1997). He served as the head of his university department from 1974 to 1982, was the plenary speaker at the 7th and 9th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics in 1974 and 1978, respectively, and a visiting professor at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada in 1978-79, and at the University of Texas at Austin in 1984 and 1989.
During those years, Ellis also distinguished himself by moving to bring the forces of science and religion together to the general benefit of both fields.
In 1994 he served as J K Russell Fellow of Science and Religion at the Centre for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley, California.
In 1996 he co-wrote, with Nancey Murphy, On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Cosmology, Theology and Ethics, a significant contribution to understanding the ethical underpinnings of the universe, one that specifically holds that the moral basis of ethics is the self-sacrificing love known as kenotics.
His efforts to balance the rationality of evidence-based science with faith and hope has made Ellis a key figure in the discussion at the boundaries of science and theology.
In 2002 he edited The Far-Future Universe, proceedings of a symposium on eschatology held at the Pontifical Academy in the Vatican and wrote The Universe Around Us: An Integrative View of Science and Cosmology, an electronic book comparing the natural and life sciences. He continues to provide an informed, compelling body of work.
Ellis and his wife, Mary, a retired physician, have been married since 1978 and live in Cape Town. Ellis is the father of two children, two stepchildren, and has four grandchildren.
