Sergei Anatoljevich Rakityansky was born in Omsk in 1956. From 1973 to 1978, he studied physics in Tashkent University (USSR). After that, during 19 years (1978 -1997), he worked at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Dubna, Russia). In 1997 he emigrated to South Africa where worked at the University of South Africa (UNISA, Pretoria). Since 2009, he is Professor of Physics at the University of Pretoria. His research focusses on scattering theory, theory of quantum resonances, and on nuclear reactions. On such topics he authored more than 60 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals.