Professor Nigel Bennett, the current Austin Roberts chair of African mammalogy and past DSTI-NRF chair of Mammal Behavioural Ecology and Physiology, celebrated his 500^th publication in October 2024.

When asked about reaching this milestone, he replied, “Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be an author on this number of publications; it has been the result of a huge amount of work and determination”.

Prof Bennett has published with over 100 of his close international and national colleagues that span the continents of Africa, Europe, Asia, America and Australasia. “Each publication represents a fascinating study exploring how species function and survive, often in quite inhospitable environments,” Prof Bennett says.

“Each piece of work brings back memories of working with either a student or a research colleague and the fun they had collecting data”. Much of the research has involved field work in beautiful and remote regions. Indeed, Prof Bennett says “that each paper has resulted in a long-term friendship with his co-author (s) and this has been important”.

On a professional level, it represents a highlight in his career, but personally, he is just excited that he has managed to share the research with the scientific community. His passion is nurturing and training up research students and sharing his wealth of knowledge on African mole-rats, for which he was acknowledged by the university with the Exceptional Supervisor award.

Prof Bennett has been awarded the University of Pretoria (UP) Chancellor's Medal for his research on four occasions and received the Exceptional Academic Achiever Award for the past twenty years. He is a fellow of the Zoological Society of London, a fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa, a member of the Academy of Sciences of South Africa, and a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences.

He has been the recipient of the Gold Medal from the Zoological Society of Southern Africa and the Havenga Prize for outstanding contributions to Life Sciences, awarded by the Academy of Science and Arts of South Africa. The University of Pretoria awarded him the UP Commemorative Research Medal for being one of the top 100 scientists in 100 years of its existence. In 2021, he was made an honorary member of the American Society of Mammalogists (fewer than one hundred luminaries have been awarded this title in a century). In 2022, Prof Bennett received the prestigious JFW Herschel Medal from the Royal Society of South Africa for his outstanding contribution to research on African mammals.

Prof Bennett has now published 510 papers and has a Web of Science h index of 53 and a Google h index of 64. He says this is “not too bad for a mammologist that has a small research group”, but is quick to comment that the metrics are not important to him, what really matters is that his job has in effect been a hobby and as he quite rightly states it is rare for someone to be paid for a hobby! Bennett’s two passions in life are African mole rats and mountain and eastern lowland gorillas. He loves to travel to Rwanda, Uganda and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to see the magnificent gorillas of central Africa.