Born in 1939 to George Rayner Ellis, a newspaper editor, and Gwendoline Hilda MacRobert Ellis in Johannesburg, George Francis Rayner Ellis attended the
University of Cape Town, where he graduated with honours in 1960 with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics with distinction. He represented the university in fencing, rowing and flying. While a student at
St John's College, Cambridge, where he received a PhD in applied maths and theoretical physics in 1964, he was on college rowing teams. At Cambridge, Ellis served as a research fellow from 1965 to 1967, was assistant lecturer in the
Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics until 1970, and was then appointed university lecturer, serving until 1974. Ellis became a visiting professor at the
Enrico Fermi Institute at the
University of Chicago in 1970, a lecturer at the
Cargese Summer School in Corsica in 1971 and the
Erice Summer School in Sicily in 1972, and a visiting H3 professor at the
University of Hamburg, also in 1972. The following year, Ellis co-wrote
The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time with
Stephen Hawking, debuting at a strategic moment in the development of
General Relativity Theory. In the following year, Ellis returned to South Africa to accept an appointment as professor of applied mathematics at the
University of Cape Town, a position he held until his retirement in 2005. In 2005 Ellis appeared as a guest speaker at the
Nobel Conference in
St. Peter, Minnesota. == Work ==