Mr Chancellor, I have the honour to present to you George Duncan Nicolson, internationally respected radio astronomer, engineer and scientific administrator, for the award of the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa. Born in 1938, George Nicolson went to Germiston Boys High School, and early on he showed a special interest in exploring the insides of the family radio, toaster, and any other electronic gadget that came his way. Such was his fascination with how things worked that he spent all his pocket money on a magazine called "Practical Wires", and topped up his modest income by fixing broken appliances for friends and neighbours. He also spent many hours lurking in the back of the local radio repair shop, and, encouraged by the owner, he began building up his own receiver and transmitter, obtained his radio amateur licence at 18 and started communicating with other radio hams.

After school, he headed for Wits University, where he wasted no time in obtaining a BSc and M.Sc. in engineering and physics, both extremely demanding courses. When scientists tell us that the universe is made up of protons, electrons and neutrons, they never mention all the morons who don't understand science in the first place. But Nicolson is a true scientist, and his training made him a vary rare individual, who could cope with the nuts and bolts of construction at one end, and with the extremely abstract and theoretical aspects of physics at the other end of the scale.

His astronomical career (and I mean this literally) really began at Hartebeesthoek in 1961 when he began working at the NASA Deep Space Station. The satellite dish there was originally designed to track unmanned lunar and planetary spacecraft, sputniks and the like, which are rapidly becoming so numerous these days that it seems we will soon have no more room for flying saucers. But despite all these objects in space, Nicolson had the vision and foresight to see an important niche which could be filled, in the lulls between NASA space missions: he realised he could use this facility as a radio telescope in order to create his own radio picture of the southern sky. So, without any fanfare or fuss, he quietly got down to this pioneering work, and by 1965 he had provided the very first radio map of the southern Milky Way at 960 MHz. He continued working towards his Phd in this field, despite the lack of appropriate expertise to guide him in his work. The only really useful advice he recalls from his supervisor was something along these lines: first you tell them what you are going to tell them, then you tell them, and then you tell them what you have told them. It must have worked, because he finally earned his well deserved Ph.D. in Physics from Wits in 1975.

Unwilling to take commonsense advice not to get smart alexy with the galaxy, Nicolson now found time to explore other fascinating phenomena, such as the nature of the radio emission from galactic black hole candidates - something which mere mortals such as ourselves are probably better off not knowing about at all.

Totally intrigued by the distant galaxies, quasars, and pulsars that he could see through his telescope, George Nicolson again saw a golden opportunity when NASA abandoned the Hartebeesthoek facility in 1975. He took up the challenge to convert the skeleton facility that they left behind into a viable radio astronomy observatory. Anywhere else in the world such an aged telescope, established in the 60s, would by now have collapsed into an obsolete pile of rubbish. But in South Africa "n boer maak 'n plan". He applied to the CSIR for funding and in 1975 was appointed Director of the new Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory, which I shall henceforth refer to as HartRAO. Immediately, he rolled up his sleeves, grabbed his spanner and hard hat, and got down to the business of keeping his beloved telescope going. And using a bit of blik and plastic here, shoestring and sealing wax there, and a great deal of unerring intuition and prodigious scientific, engineering and management skill, over the years he almost single -handedly transformed the observatory into a state-of-the-art, multi-disciplinary facility with an impressive scientific output. However, because people like us do not really appreciate radio telescopes, Nicolson realised early on that he would need to find some way to justify doing the blue sky research he really wanted to do, by linking it to something practical and applied, which could really involve the wider community and benefit our country. There were three ways in which he did this.

The first was by developing a Very Long Baseline Interferometer, fondly known as a VLBI. This is not something which interferes for ages; it is a technique which links radio telescopes across the globe to achieve with unprecedented resolution the observation of very fine details of enigmatic astronomical objects (don't they sound wonderful). Why, you may ask, was this so important? Well it all comes down to position. In fact I believe that if he had failed in science, Nicolson would have been a very successful estate agent, because he intuitively exploited the strongest asset of HartRAO - its position.

By that time, in order to observe the heavens, it had become vital to link telescopes as evenly as possible over all the world's continents, but while there was an abundance of such telescopes in the UK and the Americas, there were none in Africa. Nicolson realised that HartRAO was the only radio telescope in Africa which happened to occupy the pivotal position which could complete the distribution of telescopes across the globe. And so his telescope became absolutely vital in the international VLBI network. Not only did this earn huge scientific kudos for him and his small technical staff, but it attracted international recognition overnight, along with a good deal of money from participating countries, what we might refer to as "an astronomical fee". Even better, it soon became clear that HartRAO offered the very best and most spectacular views, indeed, the ONLY views of the southern sky, which, you will be pleased to know, is THE most interesting part of the sky. Only from HartRAO can you see all sorts of unique phenomena, including the centre of the galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds, and it is now a veritable tourist attraction in the astronomical world.

The second way in which Nicolson made HartRAO indispensable for the country was through its contribution to geodesy. For those of you who don't already know, geodesy has got to do with position as well, this time knowing exactly where you are. While most of us are quite happy to accept that we are in the Monument here in Grahamstown, that is not nearly good enough for people like George Nicolson. Apparently if you have an absolutely exact known point, then you will be able to measure the orientation of the earth and the rate of continental drift really accurately. Thanks to the work of Nicolson, who does know precisely where Hart RAO is at all times, to the last millimetre, we now know exactly how fast the continent of Africa is moving North East. For those who are feeling somewhat insecure in your seats right now, I am happy to report that we are edging along at the rate at which your toenails grow: 25mm per annum, so it will be eons before any collision occurs. And thanks to Nicolson, we also know how much the earth is wobbling, presumably so when we are at a cocktail party, we can ascertain exactly when we have had too much wine.

But on a more serious note, there have been real benefits from HartRAO knowing where it is: this known point is used globally to calibrate the global position system, or GPS, which is extremely useful to lost yachtsmen, hikers, BMW drivers, and even satellites, which anxiously seek HartRAO like a beacon in the dark, as the first known stable reference point after they leave the northern hemisphere. Indeed, it is to Nicolson's credit that our National Survey actually relocated themselves to that same point, so that they too could say that they knew where they were. So next time you want to scoff at scientists, because they can't accurately predict the weather, just remember your state-of-the-art satellite cell phone with its GPS receiver which can pinpoint your position when you get lost. Thanks to George Nicolson, you have HartRAO in your pocket - if you can afford it.

The third way in which Nicolson made HartRAO the internationally renowned site that it is, is the way he used its spare time to sponsor a range of very important discoveries in the relatively young science of radio astronomy. Because there were so few astronomers in South Africa, there was a lot of spare time when the telescope would have lain idle. He saw the opportunity to fill that time with long-term monitoring projects that nobody else in the Northern hemisphere could undertake, because they didn't have the luxury of free observing time. Only Nicolson and his team could watch one object for ten years or more to see what it was going to do. The work is tedious, meticulous and time consuming, and these star-struck moon-gazers must get very stiff necks, but they eventually provide the essential basic scientific knowledge which makes a lasting contribution of enormous significance. He has personally contributed some 94 academic papers, reporting the important results of his research on all sorts of weird and wonderful extra-galactic objects.

One of the things Nicholson spent many years observing very closely was a star system called Circinus X-1, which emitted fascinating X-ray and radio flares every 16 days in the 80s.Nicolson and his staff monitored every flare cycle of Circinus for years and then they inexplicably died away. Apparently, some time after the last detected flare, George shaved off his beard, and this auspicious move was hailed by the research staff as an attempt to propitiate the star and get it to flare again. Apparently, however, Circinus was unimpressed by the clean-shaven astronomer, and stayed quiet, so George has his beard back

Apart from his beard, what makes George Nicolson all the more special, is the fact that he has been an inspirational mentor, and a valued friend of Rhodes University. For nearly 40 years he has nurtured a symbiotic relationship with our Department of Physics & Electronics which has proved to be hugely beneficial. From the time of his early mapping of the southern skies, he collaborated closely with Rhodes academics, enabling them to use equipment at HartRAO to make an even more detailed map of the southern sky, a 15 year-long project for which Rhodes has become quite famous, astronomically speaking.

As Director of HartRAO he had the toy, and we sent our staff and students to play with it. When I tell you that the running costs to use the telescope are R10,000 per day, but Rhodes staff and students have used it over the years, for up to a month at a time, free of charge, you will realise just how much he has saved the University by providing access to this equipment! As well as providing a telescope to undertake world-class science, he has also provided free academic supervision, unofficially, to our young researchers To date 6 Ph.Ds. and 4 M.Scs from Rhodes have resulted from observations made at HartRAO under Nicolson's watchful eye, and all benefited hugely from his expert guidance and advice, along with a deep and genuine personal interest. Today, nearly half of HartRAO staff are Rhodes graduates, and many of our other graduates, all touched by his wise guiding hands, are now acknowledged international leaders and experts.

Apart from his prodigious scientific expertise, George Nicolson is also a wise science policy administrator. As a long-standing member of the management team of the National Research Foundation he has also had a significant and positive impact on science and education policy in South Africa. Here is a man who really DOES science - world class science- on a third world budget. And, in between all this science, I am pleased to report that our noted astronomer has found time to tear himself away from telescopes and enjoy a very fulfilling personal life with his wife Prue, and their two successful sons. While she ruefully admits to being an astronomy widow, she is at least grateful that in his absence he sleeps overnight at the observatory dorm, and watches stars, and not pretty girls.

Well liked, wise and respected in his field, highly innovative and creative and yet deeply humble and unassuming, George Nicolson is undoubtedly an elder-statesman of science whose legacy to South Africa includes a world-class observatory saved from the scrap heap, a generation of successful scientists, and a vision of how good science can be done with the limited resources we have in South Africa. An honorary degree from Rhodes is indeed a fitting acknowledgment of his lifetime achievements and his service to Rhodes, and it therefore gives me very great pleasure, Mister Chancellor, to request you to confer on George Duncan Nicolson the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa.