In 1973 George Ellis established a Cosmology Group in the department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town. Ellis, a UCT graduate, completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Dennis Sciama. The group grew to include David Matravers and Charles Hellaby and various postdoctoral researchers over the next two decades. These included Tony Rothman, Bill Bonnor, Xu Chongming, Adrian Burd, David Coule, Peter Dunsby, Paul Haines and others. Visitors to the group over the years have included John Ellis, Kip Thorne, Mike Disney, Jurgen Ehlers and Jayant Narlikar.