14 December 2007 DAVID KING Many open doors By Sasha Planting

At the age of 68 Sir David King is not interested in slowing down. Last month he stepped down as chief scientific adviser to the British prime minister and head of the office of science & technology there. He held the position for seven years and was widely credited with getting the previous UK prime minister, Tony Blair, to act on climate change. King, a man not known for mincing words, outraged many when he said: "Climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today - more serious even than the threat of terrorism." He also supported further research into genetically modified foods, the adoption of nuclear power, and more recently the culling of badgers to curb tuberculosis and foot-and-mouth disease. In January he will take up the position of director of the newly formed Smith School of Enterprise & the Environment at Oxford University. "The school will conduct interdisciplinary research to find private-sector solutions to environmental problems. It will collaborate with business and government to look at solving issues that are unprecedented in scale and global in scope," he says in an Oxford University press release. Born in Durban in 1939, King gained his master's in chemistry at Wits. But in 1963 he was given three months to finish his PhD and told to leave the country because of "subversive" activity. By 1988 he was the 1920 professor of physical chemistry at the University of Cambridge and in 2000 was appointed by the prime minister. Despite his success in the UK he has not forgotten SA and maintains close ties with his family. His brothers, Michael (previous director of Anglo American) and Patrick (who runs a neon-signwriting business), live in SA. In one sense, he attributes much of his success to growing up in SA. "All my grounding was in SA. South Africans, Australians and New Zealanders do well in the UK - people can't slot you into a region or a class, which opens many doors." Though he has no formal links with local organisations, he is very supportive of SA science, in particular the work at the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) company. "SA's PBMR is the most sophisticated example of nuclear engineering available in the world today," he says.

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