"We're often asked if the country needs more astronomers. The answer is no," says the University of Cape Town astronomy professor cheerfully. "But we do need minds trained in research techniques in the physical sciences because those skills are applicable in industry and in other sciences in general."

South Africa is often urged to use science to fight poverty, so awarding a prize for public contributions to an astronomer is rather unusual.

However, it is a plank of the department of science and technology to promote astronomy to take advantage of he country's ideal location in the southern hemisphere - considered to have a better view of the solar system.

With the lack of light pollution and storms, this means that the country has one of the best "ringside seats" on the planet for gazing deep into the universe - one of the reasons why the government has invested heavily in the cutting-edge South African Large Telescope (SALT), which is on the verge of completion in the tiny town of Sutherland, and is bidding for the rights to host the 1 billion US dollar Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope complex in the remote expanses of the Northern Cape sheep farms.

"There are many spinoffs from astronomy," says Warner, one of just three distinguished professors in the UCT faculty of science. "Astronomy has driven the technology and the technology has found other important applications in security and health."

The 65-year-old notes, "whenever your baggage is put through the x-ray machine at airports much of that equipment is called astrophysics. That highly-sensitive scanning machine was developed by x-ray experts in astronomy."

Another example, he said, was "the infrared scanners used in hospitals to find tumours, which have a hotter temperature than the rest of the body. That came out of the technological development demanded by astronomy looking at infrared radiation from distant stars and galaxies."

"In training students in astronomy, I feel that I'm not producing more astronomers. I am training the minds of the new South Africa in research techniques."

Warner's main research passion is observational astronomy at South Africa's famous telescopes in Sutherland, one of the coldest regions of the country, where he specialises in compact stars, like the mysterious black holes which hoover up everything around them, and white dwarfs, the fiercely hot, tiny and incredibly dense cores of elderly stars.

Warner jokes about astronomy being a science with few obvious advantages for a developing country: "We're proud of that. We do not do any harm. Of course, we don't necessarily do any good either," he teased.

"On the other hand it is the most expensive science in the world. If you look at the amount of money that's spent on the space business in the USA it is actually the higest cost, which shows how important it is to other people."

Warner is also one of the International Astronomical Union's vice-presidents, which is considered a bit of a coup for a developing economy such as South Africa's.

Established in 1919, the IAU is the internationally recognised authority for assigning names to stars, planets and other celestial bodies.

Warner's contributions to society are many and various. He chaired the board of the Iziko Museums in Cape Town (the old South African Museum) for many years, which had an extensive outreach programme, and served on the board of the South African library (now the national library of South Africa).

He chairs the Friends of the National Library, lectures frequently at schools and serves on committee of the Friends of the Iziko Museum. Not bad going for someone who was briefly apprenticed to a more ancient technology, that of blacksmith, in his youth in the United Kingdom.

The second annual awards of the Academy of Science of South Africa seem to have come full circle. Warner was one of the nine founding fathers of the post-apartheid academy in 1996, who then excluded themselves from being members so that they couldn't be accused of nepotism.

Now he has received the science-for-society gold medal - with one ounce of real gold - at the function at the University of Cape Town faculty of health sciences in Observatory.

ASSAf itself was formed to overcome the apartheid-era divides in the scientific community, when there were two science bodies for white scientists only, divided along linguistic lines into Afrikaans-speaking and English-speaking.

It is now a member of the 90-nation group known as the Inter-Academy Panel.

Another winner was paediatric AIDS specialist Professor Hoosen "Jerry" Coovadia of the University of Kwazulu-Natal, who segued from being a noted anti-apartheid campaigner to being an equally effective opponent of AIDS dissidents. A profile on Coovadia is available online at the Science and Development Network at www.scidev.net.

Six weeks after winning the award, Warner will retire."But it won't make the slightest difference, I become a professor emeritus and move down the corridor to another office to make way for a successor. My life is in research and in astronomy and I will hardly notice the difference," says Warner, who has lived in South Africa for 32 years.

Last year, the first time the ASSAF awards were held, winners were Professor Malekgapuru Makgoba, vice chancellor of the University of Kwazulu-Natal in Durban and Pietermaritzburg, and bioethicist Professor Trefor Jenkins of the University of the Witwatersrand.

The award also comes in the midst of a debate about the need for science academies in Africa to be financially independent if they are to offer governments truly impartial advice.

The South African science academy will know by the end of the year whether it has succeeded in winning any of the twenty million dollar grant run by National Academy of Sciences in the USA and coming from a charitable foundation set up by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates and his wife which is intended to strengthen the capacity of academies of science in Africa.

Related Links
Department of Astronomy,UCT
Academy of Science of South Africa
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