Professor Wieland Gevers qualified in Medicine with First Class Honours at the University of Cape Town in 1960, and proceeded as a Rhodes Scholar to Oxford University to obtain the DPhil degree in 1966 under Sir Hans Krebs (regulation of liver metabolism). He subsequently spent four postdoctoral years in the laboratory of another Nobelist, Dr Fritz Lipmann, at the Rockefeller University in New York (biosynthesis of peptide antibiotics) before returning to South Africa in 1970.
He was Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor responsible for planning and academic process at the University of Cape Town from 1992 until the end of 2002, and Professor of Medical Biochemistry since 1978. He was (founder) President of the South Africa Biochemical Society from 1975-6, and again President from 1981-2.