Emeritus Professor Horst Klump: 1940–2021

Emeritus Professor Horst Klump – from the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Department of Biochemistry – passed away on 18 May 2021 after a long illness.

Horst took up a professorship in the then Department of Biochemistry in 1987 and served as the head of the department for three years: from 1994 to 1997. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2000.

He will be remembered for the gentleness that he brought to the department, as well as his complete passion for science. He continued to pursue his passion for biothermodynamics well into retirement, publishing in 2020, at the age of 80, on “Energy mapping of the genetic code and genomics domains: implications for code evolution and Molecular Darwinism” in the Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics.

Horst will also be remembered as a gentle giant of science who would be proud to offer his shoulders for us all to stand on. He was also a quirky person with a great sense of humour, and was always very quick to share interesting snippets from both the worlds of science and other fields with his colleagues.

A celebration of his life is being planned, the details of which are still being finalised.

We will miss him.

Emeritus Professor Klump is survived by his wife, Elsa; sons, Jens and Till; his sister, Else; and brother, Georg.