Neil Turok — South African Physicist born on June 11, 1958,

Neil Geoffrey Turok is a South African physicist, and the Director of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. His work has been in the area of mathematical physics and early universe physics, including the cosmological constant and a cyclic model for the universe. Recent evidence for gravitational waves from the Big Bang appeared to provide evidence against this model, though the claim that the BICEP2 experiment has detected gravitational waves has since been thrown into considerable doubt... (wikipedia)

It may be that we live in an endless universe, both in space and in time. And there've been Bangs in the past, and there will be Bangs in the future.
My main interest is the problem of the singularity. If we can't understand what happened at the singularity we came out of, then we don't seem to have any understanding of the laws of particle physics. I'd be very happy just to understand the last singularity and leave the other ones to future generations.
Quantum physics forms the foundation of chemistry, explaining how molecules are held together. It describes how real solids and materials behave and how electricity is conducted through them... It enabled the development of transistors, integrated circuits, lasers, LEDs, digital cameras and all the modern gadgetry that surrounds us.
The only people who can fix Africa are talented young Africans. By unlocking and nurturing their creative potential, we can create a step change in Africa's future.
The world is not made up of particles and waves and beams of light with a definite existence. Instead, the world works in a much more exploratory way. It is aware of all the possibilities at once and trying them out all the time. That is a hard thing to picture.