Igle Gledhill holds a PhD in plasma physics from the University of Natal. She did her post-doctoral work at UCLA on thermonuclear fusion, and at Stanford on Space Shuttle physics. For 30 years, she specialised in transonic computational fluid dynamics at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, South Africa, where she also chaired the Strategic Research Panel. She also contributed as a computational physicist within multidisciplinary collaborations. Her current interest is in unfolding and exploiting the aerodynamics of accelerating objects, and she is Visiting Adjunct Professor in Aeronautical Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand.
In 2001, she graduated from the Executive National Security Programme at the SA Defence College. She served on the executive of the Gender Gap project of the International Science Council and 11 international unions. She is a council member of the South African Council for Natural Scientific Professions; a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa; Sigma Xi, and Past President of the South African Institute of Physics. She has also served on the World Cultural Council Interdisciplinary Committee. She serves as Editor-in-Chief of African Physics Newsletter, and as one of three Vice-Presidents of the Network of African Science Academies.
