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01 January 2018

 

 

Prof Marian Tredoux, Associate Professor in the
Department of Geology at the University of the Free State,
recently had a mineral named after her.
Photo: Sonia Small

Prof Marian Tredoux is a geochemist and lecturer in the Department of Geology at the University of the Free State (UFS). Her research interests are rocks, particularly the chemistry of rocks and the minerals they are composed of – chemicals similar to those found in laboratories, although they occur in nature.

Prof Tredoux started her research career at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), after which she spent a number of years at the University of Cape Town (UCT). For the past 11 years, she has been at the UFS, which has brought her in close proximity of her primary field-research area in Barberton. This fascinating part of the country has been the focus of her research for 30 years. She has always been intrigued by the earth's crust in this area, which she describes as "very old, very strange, and very interesting".

Prof Tredoux has been collaborating with colleagues and peers overseas in an attempt to unravel the intricacies of this unusual geological area. Some of these colleagues recently discovered a new mineral in one of the rock formations of the Barberton mountain range. They decided to name the mineral after Prof Tredoux, dubbing it tredouxite. "I am very honoured by this, and very grateful that all these years of collaboration are being acknowledged," Prof Tredoux said.

News Archive

Dr Abdon Atangana cements his research globally by solving fractional calculus problem
2014-12-03

 

Dr Abdon Atangana

To publish 29 papers in respected international journals – and all of that in one year – is no mean feat. Postdoctoral researcher Abdon Atangana at the Institute for Groundwater Studies at the University of the Free State (UFS) reached this mark by October 2014, shortly before his 29th birthday.

His latest paper, ‘Modelling the Advancement of the Impurities and the Melted Oxygen concentration within the Scope of Fractional Calculus’, has been accepted for publication by the International Journal of Non-Linear Mechanics.

In previously-published research he solved a problem in the field of fractional calculus by introducing a fractional derivative called ‘Beta-derivative’ and its anti-derivative called ‘Atangana-Beta integral’, thereby cementing his research in this field.

Dr Atangana, originally from Cameroon, received his PhD in Geohydrology at the UFS in 2013. His research interests include:
• the theory of fractional calculus;
• modelling real world problems with fractional order derivatives;
• applications of fractional calculus;
• analytical methods for partial differential equations;
• analytical methods for ordinary differential equations;
• numerical methods for partial and ordinary differential equations; and
• iterative methods and uncertainties modelling.

Dr Atangana says that, “Applied mathematics can be regarded as the bridge between theory and practice. The use of mathematical tools for solving real world problems is as old as creation itself. As written in the book Genesis ‘And God saw the light, that it was good; and divided the light from the darkness’, the word division appears here as the well-known method of separation of variables, this method is usually employed to solve a class of linear partial differential equations”.

“A mathematical model is a depiction of a system using mathematical concepts and language. The procedure of developing a mathematical model is termed mathematical modelling. Mathematical models are used not only in natural sciences, but also in social sciences such as economics, psychology, sociology and political sciences. These models help to explain systems and to study the effects of different components, and to make predictions about behaviours.”

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