George Francis Rayner Ellis, FRS, Hon.

FRSSAf The Royal Society of South Africa is a learned society composed of eminent South African scientists and academics. The society was granted its royal charter by King Edward VII in 1908, nearly a century after Capetonians first began to conceive of ...

(born 11 August 1939), is the emeritus distinguished professor of complex systems in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

. He co-authored ''

The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

'' with

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

physicist Stephen Hawking, published in 1973, and is considered one of the world's leading theorists in

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...

. From 1989 to 1992 he served as president of the

International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation The International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation (ISGRG) is a learned society established in 1971 with the goal to promote research on general relativity (GR) and gravitation. To that end, it encourages communication between relativi ...

. He is a past president of the

International Society for Science and Religion The International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR) is a learned society established in 2001 for the purpose of the promotion of education through the support of inter-disciplinary learning and research in the fields of science and religion c ...

. He is an A-rated researcher with the NRF. Ellis, an active Quaker, was a vocal opponent of

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

during the National Party reign in the 1970s and 1980s, and it is during this period that Ellis's research focused on the more philosophical aspects of

, for which he won the

Templeton Prize The Templeton Prize is an annual award granted to a living person, in the estimation of the judges, "whose exemplary achievements advance Sir John Templeton's philanthropic vision: harnessing the power of the sciences to explore the deepest quest ...

in 2004. He was also awarded the

Order of the Star of South Africa The Order of the Star of South Africa is a South African National Order that consisted of seven decorations in two military and five non-military classes. The order was discontinued on 2 December 2002. Institution The Order of the Star of South ...

by Nelson Mandela, in 1999. On 18 May 2007, he was elected a

fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the British

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

Life

Born in 1939 to George Rayner Ellis, a newspaper editor, and Gwendoline Hilda MacRobert Ellis in Johannesburg, George Francis Rayner Ellis attended the

, 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 The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...

, 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 Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

until 1970, and was then appointed university lecturer, serving until 1974. Ellis became a visiting professor at the

Enrico Fermi Institute __NOTOC__ The Institute for Nuclear Studies was founded September 1945 as part of the University of Chicago with Samuel King Allison as director. On November 20, 1955, it was renamed The Enrico Fermi Institute for Nuclear Studies. The name was s ...

at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

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 The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vo ...

, also in 1972. The following year, Ellis co-wrote ''

'' with Stephen Hawking, debuting at a strategic moment in the development of

General Relativity Theory General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. G ...

. In the following year, Ellis returned to South Africa to accept an appointment as professor of applied mathematics at the

, a position he held until his retirement in 2005. In 2005 Ellis appeared as a guest speaker at the

Nobel Conference The Nobel Conference is an academic conference held annually at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MinnesotaFounded in 1963 the conference links a general audience with the world's foremost scholars and researchers in conversations centered on ...

in St. Peter, Minnesota.

Work

George Ellis has worked for many decades on anisotropic cosmologies ( Bianchi models) and inhomogeneous universes, and on the philosophy of cosmology. He is currently writing on the emergence of complexity, and the way this is enabled by top-down causation in the hierarchy of complexity. Recently Ellis has also collaborated with Teppo Felin,

Denis Noble Denis Noble (born 16 November 1936) is a British biologist who held the Burdon Sanderson Chair of Cardiovascular Physiology at the University of Oxford from 1984 to 2004 and was appointed Professor Emeritus and co-Director of Computational Ph ...

, and Jan Koenderink on a set of articles published in the journal ''Genome Biology.'' In terms of

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ult ...

, Ellis is a

Platonist Platonism is the philosophy of Plato and philosophical systems closely derived from it, though contemporary platonists do not necessarily accept all of the doctrines of Plato. Platonism had a profound effect on Western thought. Platonism at l ...

Publications

Books

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Papers

Ellis has over 500 published articles; including 17 in

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

. Notable papers include: * * * * * * * * *

Honours

In 2019

Rhodes University Rhodes University is a public research university located in Makhanda (Grahamstown) in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. It is one of four universities in the province. Established in 1904, Rhodes University is the province's oldest ...

Grahamstown Makhanda, also known as Grahamstown, is a town of about 140,000 people in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is situated about northeast of Port Elizabeth and southwest of East London. Makhanda is the largest town in the Makana ...

announced it would award Ellis an honorary doctorate in laws (LLD, hc)

Notes and references

External links

Partial list of Ellis' published papers

George Ellis's web page

Professor George Ellis: a man of many parts

Cape Argus The ''Cape Argus'' is a daily newspaper co-founded in 1857 by Saul Solomon and published by Sekunjalo in Cape Town, South Africa. It is commonly referred to as ''The Argus''. Although not the first English-language newspaper in South Afric ...

, 18 March 2004
George Ellis's scientific work as listed at SPIRES
* o
Speaking of Faith
with Krista Tippett
transcript

George Ellis extended interview with transcript for the 'Why Are We Here?' documentary series
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ellis, George 1939 births Living people Alumni of Michaelhouse South African cosmologists Fellows of the Royal Society Members of the International Society for Science and Religion Philosophers of cosmology South African Christians South African mathematicians South African Quakers Templeton Prize laureates University of Cape Town academics University of Cape Town alumni Writers about religion and science