Then it got all physical

A career path in science was the most natural decision Dr Buyisiwe Sondezi believes she has ever had to make in her life.

"It was more than a decision. You could say I found myself doing physics. I had three majors - statistics, chemistry and physics - and I chose physics," she said.

For the past seven years the 38-year-old mother sacrificed time with her two daughters to spend many hours at the University of Johannesburg physics laboratories.

Sondezi recently became the first female in Africa to be awarded a PhD in "experimental physics of highly correlated matter".

Her thesis, titled "The physical properties of ferromagnetic CeTX compounds, where T is copper and gold and X is silicon and germanium", describes behaviour that contradicts and challenges some of the well-established laws and paradigms of physics.

She said: "Popular science is usually concerned with our natural world near room temperature.

"I looked for new physics at temperatures far below the temperatures of our natural world, lower even than temperatures found in outer space. This is the deepest low-temperature region where classical physics gets replaced by quantum mechanics to predict how matter behaves."

Sondezi's supervisor, Prof André Strydom, said he learnt as much as a person from her as she had to learn from him in their joint physics research during her doctoral programme.

"Her perseverance in pursuing her goals in life, and her quiet, persuasive demeanour are some of her long list of special qualities that people treasure about her."

But things were not always this effortless for Sondezi, who is originally from Nyanyadu, Newcastle, in KwaZulu-Natal.

She and her peers were forced to rely on their imaginations and what their textbooks said as their school had no laboratory.

It was only in her first year at the University of Johannesburg that she was exposed to a laboratory and equipment such as beakers, spatulas and test tubes.

Her fondest memory of her love for numbers goes back to the days when she used to help her mother sell vetkoek.

Sondezi attributes the small number of female physicists to a lack of support from relatives during their studies.

"Most students drop out in the first and second year, and those who do graduate rarely study physics further because it is believed to be difficult," she said.