Halley se Komeet

Gawie Cillie was born in 1910 in Stellenbosch, where he received his school and university education. After obtaining his M.Sc. degree in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, he went to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, where he earned his doctorate in Astrophysics in 1933. With another scholarship, he conducted two further years of research in astronomy at the Harvard College Observatory in the USA. During his career as a mathematics lecturer for 40 years, he devoted himself to fostering interest in astronomy among Afrikaans speakers through numerous articles and several books.

Walter Wargau was born in Munich, West Germany, in 1948. He obtained his master’s degree in Nuclear Physics in 1975. His doctorate in Astrophysics was awarded in 1980 at the Erlangen–Nuremberg University with a dissertation on cataclysmic variables.  He is associated with the Department of Mathematics/Applied Mathematics/Astronomy at the University of South Africa. For his research, he has visited a number of universities and other scientific institutions around the world, for example, the European Southern Observatory in Chile, South America, and Tel Aviv University in Israel.