It is perhaps not surprising that University of Pretoria (UP) Associate Professor Ryan Blumenthal’s day starts at 3.30am And not just his weekdays – every day. He does so many seemingly disparate things that there probably isn’t time to fit them all into more conventional working hours. 

Then again, perhaps it has something to do with the type of work he does. Prof Blumenthal is a senior specialist forensic pathologist – essentially the medical doctor who performs autopsies in the case of suspicious deaths. 

“If you’re constantly confronted with death and dying, it makes you philosophical about how you manage your time,” he says. “It’s about spending your finite amount of time on Earth with art, style and intensity, with pleasure, play, curiosity and intelligence – and not wasting time. You need to act before life and time make choices for you.”

While he is primarily a forensic pathologist, that is hardly all he is about. Prof Blumenthal is also an associate professor in UP’s Department of Forensic Medicine. As such, he lectures law students on forensic pathology and medical students on traumatology; writes up academic research; presents papers at conferences; sits on the editorial boards of several journals; and supervises postgraduate students. 

And he is making waves. Most recently, he won the National Research Foundation (NRF) Public Engagement with Research Award “in recognition of outstanding contributions to the public’s engagement with and understanding of science”.

In addition to his medical qualifications, Prof Blumenthal has a PhD in Electrical and Information Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand and is known as the “lightning pathologist”, which is the subject of much of his academic writing. 

“I think there’s a nerd component to this,” he says of his decision to pursue a doctorate after his medical specialisation, adding that he did not wish to be a jack of all trades and a master of none. 

“Mastery is what it’s about. I’d rather know a field very, very well. There's something comforting about making all the mistakes you can make in a very narrow field.”

What about his multiple interests then?
“It’s about curiosity and play,” he replies. “I don't limit myself to being defined by one specific thing.”  

There’s no chance of that, considering that Prof Blumenthal is also a sleight-of-hand magician. He started performing at children’s parties from the age of 12, progressing to performing table magic at a popular Italian restaurant chain in Pretoria on Sunday nights for 20 years! He has attended international championships and congresses around the word, from Las Vegas to Lisbon, Stockholm and Beijing. In fact, part of his crack-of-dawn reading material involves keeping up with the latest magic journals.

He has also dabbled in novel writing. Although his three African novellas – The Seed, The Rain Beetle and The Butterfly – “all failed horribly”, he has not given up hope. 

“They are relegated to obscurity and there’s some second-hand bookshelf somewhere where they are not even gathering dust because they are under other books, despite being exciting books,” he says. “Maybe one day someone will rediscover that stuff,” he adds hopefully – he sold the screen rights to one of them 10 years after publication.

Far more successful is his non-fiction writing which comprises two books on forensic pathology: Autopsy – Life in the Trenches with a Forensic Pathologist from Africa (2020) and Risking Life for Death – Lessons for the Living from the Autopsy Table (2023). Both are published by Jonathan Ball.  

“The ultimate creative therapy is writing; an empty page is always listening,” Prof Blumenthal says.

Both those books played a part in him winning the NRF award for contributing to the public’s understanding of science. Other contributory factors were his eight-part documentary series, Lightning Pathologist, which screened on DStv in 2020, and his YouTube channel about forensic pathology, @AfricanForensicPathologist.

“My goal is to wake up the world to forensic pathology,” Prof Blumenthal says. 

He has previously been quoted as saying: “What I tell young people about forensic pathology is that the hours are terrible, the pay is terrible and the conditions are terrible. You’re underappreciated, unsupported, disrespected and frequently physically endangered – but there’s no better career in the world!”

Ultimately though, he concedes, it is a very rewarding job. 

“It’s a hard job. It’s messy, it’s dirty and it’s smelly. We certainly don't get the respect of cardiothoracic surgeons or neurosurgeons. We’re not as well funded. We’re in a basement somewhere. But we really are the catch net for the whole of society. If we don’t know something we have to upskill ourselves.” 

Here he adds that he had to learn about beer brewing because of the number of deaths resulting from home-brewed alcohol that was a feature of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa due to alcohol restrictions. 

“Extreme work is rest for me,” Prof Blumenthal says. “Creativity is rest, and if you are doing nothing, you must be busy doing nothing.” 

That’s why his activities include cycling every Sunday and going for a walk after work every day. He has done the Vierdaagse in Nijmegen in the Netherlands, where 45 000 people of about 70 nationalities walk a distance of up to 200km in four days. 

(“Your feet get brutalised – it’s amazing, the humanity of it all,” he says.)

Next year will be his 10th KAP sani2c, a three-day 265km mountain bike stage race from the Sani Pass in the southern Drakensberg to Scottburgh on the KwaZulu-Natal coast. 

“Then I get a black mamba jacket,” he says, referring to the clothing item that signifies being a member of sani2c’s esteemed Black Mamba club, representing commitment, endurance and loyalty. 

And what does he do when he wakes up at 3.30am daily? He faffs around, he says. This means reading, writing, making coffee, watching the birds at his feeder and “watching the world wake up”. 

“It’s me-time, because the rest of the day is just non-stop.”