Good Things · 5 hours ago

The Sa Scientist Whose Name Is Written Among the Stars

Siyabulela Xuza was a teenager mixing chemicals in his mother's kitchen in Mthatha when he set out to create a safer, cheaper rocket fuel-a curiosity that led him to build The Phoenix, a home-made rocket that soared over a kilometer high and earned him national recognition. His project took him to Sweden, where he presented before royalty, and then to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in the United States, where his work so impressed NASA-affiliated scientists that they renamed a minor planet orbiting between Mars and Jupiter in his honor: 23182 Siyaxuza. When asked years later how Harvard was going, he replied with characteristic calm: "You haven't heard? I've been awarded another scholarship to go to Harvard University." The story resurfaces every few years, each time finding South Africans who look up at the night sky and realize that one of their own has left a permanent mark there-proof that ambitions formed in a Mthatha kitchen can reach far beyond Earth's atmosphere.