SASAS awards Gold Medal to Prof Carl Roux

Prof Carl Z Roux (76), an emeritus professor of the Department of Genetics at the University of Pretoria, was recently awarded a gold medal by the South African Society for Animal Science (SASAS) in acknowledgement of exceptional services rendered in furtherance of animal science over many years.

Prof Roux’s work on the theoretical basis of growth and efficiency with application to genetics, breeding goals and nutrition is well known and internationally accepted, which has contributed to him being regarded as the doyen of South African theoretical population genetics and its physiological basis.

He obtained his BSc(Agric) and MSc degrees in Genetics at Stellenbosch University and completed his PhD in Animal Breeding and Statistics at the Iowa State University under professors Kempthorne and Hazel in 1969. His PhD thesis led to a 1974 paper in Theoretical Population Biology, which renowned researchers in the field considered ‘elegant’, ‘very powerful’ and ‘a notable contribution’ to the topic of selection in the case of many gene loci. This work also led to an invitation as a salaried research associate of Iowa State University.

After having done research at the former Animal and Dairy Science Research Institute from 1969 to 1990, Prof Roux started doing theoretical work on animal growth and efficiency, which found considerable application in nutritional research. Six PhD theses and six MSc dissertations as well as many publications of colleagues flowed from, or were based on, his mathematical description of growth and efficiency. His work also led to his receiving several awards, including a silver medal from SASAS in 1982 for exceptional meritorious and original research on animal science and the President’s Award for Service to Animal Science from SASAS in 2002.

From 1991 to 2002 he served as professor and from 2003 to 2012 as an extraordinary professor and since then as a senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria. During his professorship he was main supervisor to six PhD and 14 MSc students.

In his career, Prof Roux was invited to international congresses, was a member of the Permanent International Committee for Congresses on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production, was on the editorial board of the South African Journal of Animal Science and acted as a reviewer for the British Animal Science Journal, the European Livestock Production Science Journal, the South African Journal of Science and the South African Journal of Plant and Soil.

Prof Roux was a member of the South African Statistical Association, the South African Genetics Society, and the South African Plant Breeders Association, and is currently an honorary member of the South African Society for Animal Science