Professor Martin Wittenberg, 1962-2024

Abstract

Martin Wittenberg was born in Bethel, Germany, in 1962; he died in Cape Town in 2024. He made major contributions to the intellectual life of South Africa through his scholarship, mentorship and public service. The three of us have known him as students, as coauthors, and colleagues, and we write here to express gratitude for that privilege.

Below, we discuss some of his intellectual contributions in four areas: (1) building public goods that serve the research community and securing the foundations of empirical research for public policy, (2) data quality and measurement issues, (3) the economics of households and the labour market in South Africa, and (4) mentorship and teaching. Our discussion is not exhaustive. Nor do we aim to minimise his achievements as an anti-apartheid activist (having served as a secretary of the United Democratic Front in KwaZulu-Natal in the 1980s) or his personal qualities as a friend and as a father—but those aspects of his life are best described by others.