The University of Cape Town (UCT), located in Cape Town, is South Africa's oldest university. Founded in 1829, the unversity now has approximately 25,000 students enrolled in its six faculties; Commerce, Engineering, Health Sciences, Humanities, Law, and Science.

The UCT Department of Physics has 17 academic staff with research groups in experimental and theoretical particle physics, nuclear physics, applied physics, nanosciences, and physics education. The experimental particle physics group participates in the ATLAS and ALICE experiments at CERN as part of the SA-CERN consortium.

The teaching program in the Department of Phyiscs includes a three year Bachelors degree, a four year Honours Bachelors degree, Masters, and Doctoral degree programs. The department graduates approximately 15-20 Bachelors degrees per year and has approximately 40 post-graduate students.