Experiences of a Female Chemist in South Africa - ACS Symposium

Chapter 29

Experiences of a Female Chemist in South Africa Downloaded by UNIV OF FLORIDA on March 21, 2016 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date (Web): September 2, 2015 | doi: 10.1021/bk-2015-1195.ch029

Bice S. Martincigh* School of Chemistry and Physics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville Campus, Private Bag X54001, Durban, 4000, South Africa *E-mail: [email protected]. Telephone: +27-31-2601394.

The current author is now Associate Professor in the School of Chemistry and Physics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, where she teaches and does research in Physical Chemistry. In 2011 she was awarded the University’s Distinguished Teacher Award in recognition of “her exceptional ability to tailor and differentiate her teaching to meet the different levels of study of her undergraduate and postgraduate students, in what is, moreover, regarded as a ‘difficult’ subject – chemistry.” Her main research interests are in sunscreen photochemistry and environmental chemistry. She has successfully supervised more than 20 postgraduate students and mentored many new members of staff. Her advice to female aspirant chemists is: Find an area that you really like and can be passionate about, be open-minded and explore the field as widely as possible, rely on your own efforts and determination, and stand up for your beliefs, especially when you believe things can be done better!

Although I was born and grew up in South Africa, my background is not typical of a native South African. The story begins in north-east Italy, in the province of Friuli, where my family originates from. My parents were from a small village called Castello di Porpetto. When my father returned home from serving in World War II, he found employment with SNIA (Societa Nazionale Industria Applicazioni) in the nearby town of Torviscosa. This company manufactured rayon pulp from a locally grown reed. In the early 1950s SNIA, together with the © 2015 American Chemical Society Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.

Downloaded by UNIV OF FLORIDA on March 21, 2016 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date (Web): September 2, 2015 | doi: 10.1021/bk-2015-1195.ch029

British company Courtaulds, invested in South Africa to build a plant to produce dissolving pulp. The site chosen for this new factory was Umkomaas, on the South Coast of what was then the province of Natal. This location was particularly well suited for the factory because the Umkomaas River, the second largest river in the province, would provide a constant supply of water. Consequently approximately 350 families, mostly from Friuli, emigrated to South Africa to settle in Umkomaas. My father was in the second contingent to arrive in South Africa to man the new factory. He arrived in Umkomaas in July 1954 and was followed a year later by my mother, Norma, and my sister Germana, then six. I was born two years later in the nearby town of Scottburgh, where the nearest hospital was located. The new cellulose plant was named SAICCOR (South African Industrial Cellulose Corporation). It was a tripartite co-operation between the South African Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), Courtaulds and SNIA, and this was reflected in its first logo of three shaking hands (not unlike Marinda Wu’s Presidential Logo “Partners for Progress and Prosperity”: see Figure 1). The company has gone from strength to strength, with expansions each decade, and is now one of the biggest dissolving pulp manufacturers in the world.

Figure 1. The first logo of SAICCOR (1) (used with permission) shows a remarkable resemblance to the ACS “Partners for Prosperity” emblem. Prior to the arrival of the Italians and the construction of the cellulose plant, Umkomaas was a typical seaside resort with a number of hotels, a few shops and a government primary school. When the news broke that a large contingent of Italians would arrive to build and man SAICCOR, some of the local inhabitants were in trepidation of this avalanche of Italians, as can be seen from the cartoons that appeared in the local newspapers at the time (Figure 2). The construction of SAICCOR brought many changes to the village. Hotels were upgraded, new housing developments sprung up and the town now had cultural activities as well as its own soccer team! The Italians brought their own distinctive flair to the town by building a Catholic Church as well as an Italian Club. 342 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


Figure 2. A cartoon that appeared in a local newspaper in 1952 reflecting the misgivings of the Umkomaas inhabitants about the imminent arrival of the Italian settlers (1). (Used with permission.)

My parents had no higher education but they instilled the importance of education into us from a young age. Since there were no kindergartens in Umkomaas, I spent the first six years of my life at home with my mother. She was a dressmaker and so I would imitate her by making dresses for my dolls. My father taught me the alphabet and how to count. I could not wait for the day that I would start school. That day came in 1963 when I joined the Umkomaas Government School but I could not speak a word of English!! I was fluent in my home language of Fûrlan and could also speak some Italian. My first three months at school saw many tears as I grappled with this new language. However, this disadvantage did not hold me up and I was soon well on my way. What I did learn from this experience is that you need to have determination and you need to do things for yourself!! After completing primary school (seven years) I attended Kingsway High School some 17 miles north of Umkomaas in the town of Amanzimtoti. This meant that, instead of walking to school and going home for lunch, I needed to catch a bus early every morning. After two years at high school the school had become so large that the Natal Education Department decided to split the school into a Junior and a Senior High School. In 1972 I therefore moved to new premises 343 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


and I was in the lowest grade of the new Kingsway Senior High School. As you will see, this would become the story of my life: wherever I worked I would have to move premises. I graduated from high school in 1974 as Dux of the School. I enrolled at the University of Natal in Durban for a BSc degree, majoring in Mathematics and Chemistry. Since Durban was some 30 miles north of Umkomaas this was also when I moved out of home and lived in a university residence. After three years I graduated with a BSc and decided to continue with a BSc(Hons) degree. This is when I decided to become a chemist. I had always had an interest in the sciences, but at first I thought of becoming a mathematician. However, I decided that perhaps the job opportunities in South Africa were better for a chemist. At the time South Africa had a number of large chemical companies, namely, AECI, Sasol, Sentrachem, Unilever, as well as a number of research facilities such as the CSIR, Mintek, and the Atomic Energy Corporation (AEC). It therefore seemed to me that my employment opportunities would be better if I pursued a career in chemistry. After completing my Honours degree with a first class pass, the natural progression was to specialize in Physical Chemistry, which combines Mathematics and Chemistry. I therefore stayed on at the University of Natal to pursue my PhD. For my PhD I performed research in the area of solution thermodynamics of coordination complexes. In particular, I investigated the influence of primary and secondary nitrogen donor atoms on the thermodynamics of complex formation in aqueous solution. This involved a lot of meticulous experimental work, from which I learnt much and which has stood me in good stead for the rest of my research career.

Figure 3. A portrayal by the author’s friend, Dr Igle Gledhill, of the amount of marking she did while employed at Natal Technikon. (Illustration by Irvy Gledhill. Used with permission.) 344 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


Having from a young age wanted to be a teacher, I found an academic career a natural choice. I had spent my university vacations working in the chemical laboratory of SAICCOR and later I had been offered sponsorship by chemical companies, but I realized that my preference lay in academia. My first job was at Natal Technikon (now the Durban University of Technology) in Durban. At that time the Technikons in South Africa were similar to the Polytechs of the United Kingdom. I was employed in the School of Chemical Sciences that offered diplomas in Analytical Chemistry to both full-time and part-time students. At the time (early 1980s) these were essentially teaching institutions and the workload was very onerous. I taught 25 contact hours per week and I would set up to 16 tests per semester as well as mark 90 practical reports per week (see Figure 3). There was, therefore, no time even to think of research! However, when I look back at this period of my life I realize that it taught me to survive under stress and not to have any fears when facing a class. The good parts of this job were that the classes were small (approximately 25 students) and you got to know the students on an individual basis. During my time at this institution we moved to new premises on the Berea Road Campus as our building in the city centre was due for demolition so that a new highway could be built. Moving offices, and in particular laboratories, is not an easy task and this was to recur some years later in my next job. After six years at Natal Technikon, I joined the University of Natal as a Lecturer in Physical Chemistry in January 1990. The teaching load was less than that at the Technikon and I was able to start my research career and supervision of postgraduate students. Nevertheless, teaching did take priority and on my second day in my new job I was presented with a pile of examination scripts to mark, even though it was only the 3rd of January and the students were on vacation. At the time the University of Natal was an institution mainly for “White” students but it had the unusual feature of a Medical School for “Black” students only. This changed after the new democratic government took over in 1994 and gradually the student population changed from largely white to largely Black. Durban was served by a second university, the University of Durban-Westville, which was founded in the early 1960s, during the years of apartheid, to train students of Indian descent. With the new government came changes in the tertiary education landscape and in 2004 the two universities were merged to become the University of KwaZulu-Natal. This new university was at the time the largest residential university in the country with five campuses and over 40 000 students. In Durban the faculties were moved so that all the staff and facilities for a particular subject were based at one campus. Hence, came my next office move, from the Howard College Campus to the Westville Campus in December 2006 (see Figure 4). The building housing Chemistry at Westville was a dismal building with laboratories that were more like rabbit warrens, with narrow passages and every entrance barred by a security gate. Fortunately, the government granted the University funds to upgrade the buildings and facilities, and Chemistry was privileged in receiving a significant grant to do so. The architect appointed to design and oversee the refurbishment of the building was Gerald Seitter, and he did a wonderful job of transforming a dark cluttered building into spacious modern laboratory and office facilities. We were also fortunate in being able 345 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


to purchase some very good instrumental equipment which allowed us to start off in the new institution on a sound footing. With the merger, however, came significantly larger class sizes, the likes of which we had not seen before. Our first-year Chemistry class for science majors jumped from 300 to 1200 students, with not much change in staff numbers. My third-year Physical Chemistry class in 1990 was 35 students and now I teach 110. This has had major implications for how we teach and examine the students, but the sheer volume has brought with it a lot of administration which was absent before. At the Howard College Campus we had one first-year laboratory that housed 102 students in one sitting. We now have four first-year laboratories that house 48 students each and we typically run 24 laboratory sessions a week and 28 “small”-group (anywhere between 35 to 72 students) tutorials per week. The organization of this is a huge task. I have many people to thank for the advancement of my research career. I would like, in particular, to mention two of them. Firstly, Professor Reuben Simoyi, who welcomed me into his laboratories at West Virginia University and Portland State University on a number of occasions during periods of sabbatical leave. There I investigated convective instabilities that arise from highly exothermic oxidation reactions and the kinetics and mechanisms of a number of antioxidant systems (2, 3). This research has proved highly fruitful and I thoroughly enjoyed going back to the bench and interacting with his postgraduate students. Our collaboration continues and has now reached its twentieth year. Secondly, Professor Leo Salter, who was my immediate colleague in Physical Chemistry at the time I joined the University of Natal in 1990. He introduced me to the fascinating world of photochemistry and in particular, the photochemistry of sunscreen absorbers: their photostability, possible production of reactive oxygen species and their interactions with DNA (4, 5). He left the University in 1992 to return to the United Kingdom, but this research thread continues and has fascinated a number of my postgraduate students. My emerging research interest is in nanomaterials for the remediation of contaminated water by either adsorption or photocatalytic degradation (6). This work is starting to bear fruit and hopefully will continue especially now that the University has established a Nanotechnology Platform. My research would not have progressed without the input of the postgraduate students I have supervised. To date I have graduated 18 MSc and 5 PhD students, and I need to thank them all. They have enriched my life in so many ways and kept my curiosity of the scientific world alive (Figure 5).

346 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.




Figure 4. Images of the author’s workplace. (Courtesy of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Used with permission.)

Within the first year of my appointment at the University of Natal I was made the first-year course co-ordinator, and this task has remained with me for most of my career. As the background of our student population has changed over the years, this has led me to introduce a number of changes to our first-year curriculum and our teaching methods. In 2011, the University of KwaZulu-Natal honoured me with a Distinguished Teachers Award in recognition of “her exceptional ability to tailor and differentiate her teaching to meet the different levels of study of her undergraduate and postgraduate students, in what is, moreover, regarded as a “difficult” subject – chemistry” (see Figure 6). I was particularly pleased that, after so many years of teaching, my efforts were recognised. 348 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


Figure 5. The author with her current research group. (Photograph by Enock Chekure. Used with permission.)

Figure 6. The author signing the Distinguished Teachers Book at the award ceremony. (Courtesy of the author.) Besides my teaching and research, I partake in a number of other activities that ensure I have very little free time! For a number of years now I have been involved in the organisation of the annual FFS Expo for Young Scientists. This is an event for high school students to display for adjudication a scientific project that they have undertaken. The winners of the competition are awarded prizes and taken on a tour of scientific interest to various sites in South Africa. Together 349 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


with the late Professor Mike Laing, I have also taken part in numerous Chemistry Magic Shows as “Miss Rabbit” (see Figure 7). My present colleagues, Vincent Nyamori and Bernard Owaga, and I now perform a Magic Show where we are the “Three Magicians” (after the Three Tenors). I believe it is important to excite young children about the marvels of science, so that they are not blinded by the bad publicity that is sometimes given to Chemistry, but also to ensure more generally that science gets the attention it deserves.

Figure 7. The author having fun at various Magic Shows! (Courtesy of the author.) I am a member of a number of professional bodies such as the South African Chemical Institute (SACI), the American Chemical Society, IUPAC, the American Society for Photobiology and the European Society for Photobiology. Within SACI, I am currently serving as Vice-President and in July 2015 will take office as President. I hope that I will be able to build on what others have achieved for the chemical community in South Africa and keep the Institute going from strength to strength. I am also currently the Physical Chemistry subject editor for the South African Journal of Chemistry published by the Institute. Earlier this year I was part of the organising committee for the 5th International IUPAC Conference on Green Chemistry. This was the first meeting of its kind in South Africa and I am pleased that the meeting was well attended and brought to the forefront the importance of Green Chemistry to our society. When I joined the University of Natal in 1990 I was the second woman to be employed in the department as an academic. In fact, as a student at the same institution, I was never taught by a female lecturer in any subject! The situation is now very different. Of the 25 academic staff employed in Chemistry at the Westville Campus, 11 are women. There are now many more opportunities for female scientists in the country. The government has initiated a policy of equity and redress. For any academic post where a number of candidates are found appointable, the female candidates are given preference. There are also more job opportunities for women and associations aimed at female scientists, such as the South African Association for Women in Science and Engineering (SAWISE). Certain classes of research funding administered by the National Research Foundation (NRF) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) are earmarked for women. Various institutions have implemented mentoring schemes for women. For example, the University of KwaZulu-Natal has devised the 350 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


Women in Learning and Leadership (WILL) programme, where women can meet in a supportive atmosphere and discuss aspects of their academic careers with other women academics. The DST, in particular, recognises the achievements of women scientists in the country through the award of prizes such as the DST South African Women in Science awards. And I am pleased to report that the current Minister of Science and Technology of South Africa is a woman, the Honourable Minister Naledi Pandor. In my own institution, the number of female students in our undergraduate and postgraduate Chemistry programmes is increasing (see Figure 8). This year, for the first time, the number of female students in our Chemistry Honours class (fourth year) is more than twice the number of male students. We hope that this trend will carry over to our postgraduate MSc and PhD programmes.

Figure 8. Trends in Chemistry enrolments at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. A recent gender benchmarking study “found that the levels of female representation in the science, technology and innovation (STI) fields in the world’s leading economies were not only “alarmingly low”, but also on the decline” (7). Results from South Africa demonstrated that, although women had more opportunities available to them than ever before, their participation in the STI workforce remained low. Women remained severely under-represented in degree programmes for engineering, physics and computer science. However, the country demonstrated comparatively high rates of women on corporate boards and as science academy members. There is a need to encourage young women to enter the field of science and to pursue rich and rewarding careers in their chosen area. 351 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.

My advice to female aspirant chemists is: Find an area that you really like and can be passionate about, be open-minded and explore the field as widely as possible, rely on your own efforts and determination, and stand up for your beliefs, especially when you believe things can be done better!


Acknowledgments I am deeply indebted to Dr Marinda Wu for inviting me and giving me this wonderful opportunity to share my personal and professional journey at the Presidential Symposium on “Women Leaders of the Global Chemistry Enterprise” held at the ACS 248th National Meeting in San Francisco on 12 August 2014. I am also grateful for the partial sponsorship provided. I also wish to thank the National Research Foundation of South Africa (NRF) for the award of a Knowledge Interchange and Collaboration grant to enable me to attend the Symposium.

References 1. 2.

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Stone S. Saiccor: The First 50 Years; Rollerbird Press: Pinegowrie, South Africa, 2002; p 16. Martincigh, B. S.; Simoyi, R. H. Pattern formation fueled by dissipation of chemical energy: Conclusive evidence for the formation of a convective torus. J. Phys. Chem. A 2002, 106, 482–489. Martincigh, B. S.; Mhike, M.; Morakinyo, K.; Adigun, R.; Simoyi, R. H. Oxyhalogen-Sulfur Chemistry: Oxidation of a Thiourea Dimer: Formamidine Disulfide by Chlorine Dioxide. Aust. J. Chem. 2013, 66 (2013), 362–369. Martincigh B. S.; Allen J. M.; Allen S. K. Sunscreens: the molecules and their photochemistry. In Sunscreen Photobiology: Molecular, cellular and physiological aspects; Gasparro, F. P., Ed; Springer-Verlag and Landes Bioscience: Berlin, 1997; pp 11−45. Mturi, G. J.; Martincigh, B. S. Photostability of the sunscreening agent 4-tert-butyl-4′-methoxydibenzoylmethane (avobenzone) in solvents of different polarity and proticity. J. Photochem. Photobiol., A 2008, 200, 410–420. Hamza, I. A. A.; Martincigh, B. S.; Ngila, C. J.; Nyamori, V. O. Adsorption studies of lead(II) in water onto a bagasse multi-walled carbon nanotube composite. Phys. Chem. Earth 2013, 66, 157–166. Creamer Media’s Engineering News. http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/ article/number-of-women-in-science-technology-alarmingly-low-2013-0308 (accessed August 2014).


Experiences of a Female Chemist in South Africa - ACS Symposium

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