Obituaries: Architect of School's revival dies in accident

26 May 2002
PROFESSOR Ivor Prinsloo (67), former Director of the School of Architecture and chief architect of its revival in the seventies, died recently after a fall while hiking at Gifberg near Vanrhynsdorp.

While still an academic Prinsloo started GAPP, a countrywide architectural practice that was one of the first multi-disciplinary offices in South Africa, with architects, planners, sociologists, geographers and surveyors, testimony to his vision and capacity for hard work. He was also part of the design team for the V&A Waterfront where several of his buildings make up the landscape, and also involved with the conservation of the City.

But Prinsloo's path into academia and later, business, took a detour in his youth. Former colleague and friend, Professor Julian Cooke explained: "Ivor left school at 16, went to the mines and when he discovered architecture, he did the last two matric years in nine months and was a professor with a doctorate 18 years later."

Trained at Wits, Prinsloo obtained his PhD at the University of California, Los Angeles.

He is described as a great initiator and is credited by many for his pivotal role in resuscitating UCT's architectural school. When he was appointed Professor of Architecture in 1974, the Institute of South African Architects was considering withdrawing recognition of the School's degrees. By 1975, after restructuring and repositioning the School, it received full approval from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

"He was, and remained until his death, a major player in African architectural education and was planning to go to Kenya to conduct an architectural teachers workshop when he died," said Cooke.

Our condolences go to his wife, Jane, daughters Gaby and Anny, family, friends and colleagues.

Death of neuroradiologist and author

TOP neuroradiologist, author and UCT alumnus Dr Edmund (Ted) Burrows (MRad, DMRD, FRCR), has died in London at the age of 75.

Born in Swellendam, Burrows enrolled at the UCT Medical School in 1945 serving as editor of Varsity and as the University correspondent of the Cape Times. It was through his initiative that a student health service, the first of its kind in the country, came into being at UCT.

After qualifying in medicine he was appointed Assistant Editor of the South African Medical Journal, during which time he wrote A History of Medicine in South Africa.

Burrows left South Africa to train as a diagnostic radiologist in the UK and took a keen interest in the new field of neuroradiology. It was in this speciality that he distinguished himself.

He was appointed Director of Radiology at the Wessex Neurological Centre and the King Edward VII Hospital Midhurst, posts he held until his retirement in 1992. In 1968 Burrows founded a new professional group, the British Society of Neuroradiology and became its first secretary, later serving as its president.

Burrows was also a prolific writer. During this period he co-authored a landmark work on neuroradiology, the first English language textbook to integrate CT scanning as a diagnostic modality into neuroradiology.

In earlier years as a consultant in England he was part-time radiology editor of the Excerpta Medica Foundation and later translated medical textbooks from German into English.

From 1984–94 he was neurological editor of Clinical Radiology, the in-house publication of The Royal College of Radiologists. In 1986 he wrote a history of British radiology, Pioneers and Early Years.

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