Delia Marshall

Delia Marshall is Associate Professor in the Physics Department, University of the Western Cape. She received a National Research Foundation President's Award for promising young researchers in 2001. This award is made to young researchers who, according to their peers, have the potential to become world leaders in their field of work.

Inspiration
The curious and counter-intuitive ideas in quantum physics and relativity she read about in popular science books as a teenager. She was also interested in philosophy at the time, and many of the great physicists of the early 20th century seemed to her to be addressing deeply philosophical questions.

What she does
Teaching physics to undergraduate students is her passion. She enjoys the challenge of changing students' attitudes towards physics. Her research in physics education looks at how university students learn physics and why many experience difficulties with learning physics.

Why physics?
She likes the intellectual stimulation of the discipline itself, the fascination of trying to understand how the world around us works. Her research interest in physics education allows her to enjoy the intersection of physics with theoretical perspectives from the social sciences.

The future of physics in South Africa?
The future of physics in SA depends crucially on widening participation in the discipline to maximise the pool of talent, notably to attract more female and black students. The drop in students enrolling for physics is a worldwide problem. We need to learn from curriculum reforms elsewhere in the world that have succeeded to boost student enrolment levels, and to draw a more diverse range of students into physics. Students need to be made aware of the breadth of career opportunities that physics studies can open up.

On stereotypes
We need to change the stereotypical perceptions of physics - as a decontextualised and unimaginative discipline, divorced from the real world and social concerns. Research worldwide shows that these perceptions deter many very capable female students - and men too - from pursuing physics studies.

What about prospective female Physics students?
As women, they have a vital contribution to make to the field of physics. Diversity is important not only in terms of widening the pool of talent from which to draw the next generation of physicists, but also because women may bring different perspectives and values to bear on decisions around the directions and goals of research and the applications of technology.