Philippus Stefanus Snyman, veterinarian, was the son of Philippus Stephanus Snyman and his wife Anna Sophia Coetzee. He qualified (BVSc) with the first group of students in the Veterinary Faculty of the Transvaal University College (later the University of Pretoria) at Onderstepoort in 1924. The next year he became a member of the South African Veterinary Medical Association and joined the Division of Veterinary Services, serving as government veterinary officer in KwaZulu-Natal at Nongoma, Durban, and Greytown. From 1929 to 1934 he was attached to the Veterinary Research Institute at Onderstepoort where he also served as a lecturer. During these years, in 1931, he isolated organisms causing bovine contagious abortion in a dairy herd where Brucella abortus infection could definitely be excluded. The organisms corresponded to those described by T. Smith in the United States as the cause of certain outbreaks of the disease.

Snyman returned to field duties in 1934 as sub-director for the Orange Free State. In 1940 he obtained the DVSc degree with a thesis on Rabies, a topic on which he also wrote several papers. In 1946 he became assistant director for the Transvaal region, until his promotion to director of field services. During this time he was involved in the control of rabies and bovine tuberculosis. He published a paper on "The problem of bovine tuberculosis in the Union of South Africa" in the Journal of the South African Veterinary Association in 1955.

After his retirement in 1959 he farmed in the Greytown district of Natal, but moved to Pietermaritzburg a few months before his death. He was married to Wynandina Petronella Johanna Aveling Van Rooyen, with whom he had a son who was also named Philippus Stefanus Snyman.

List of sources:

Author and Subject Index to the Government Veterinary Reports of the Transvaal and Union of South Africa (1903-1932). Pretoria: Department of Agriculture, June 1937.

Author and Subject Index to the Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Science and Animal Industry (1933-1950) and the Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Research (1951-1968). Pretoria: Department of Agriculture, June 1969.

FamilySearch: Philippus Stefanus Snyman. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QHV-V38J-TJTY?view=index&personArk=/ark:/61903/1:1:6NZC-J4K6&action=view&cc=3511741&lang=en&groupId= AND https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/G3QW-3F5/philippus-stefanus-snyman-1898

Google scholar. http://scholar.google.co.za/ , publications by P.S. Snyman.

Journal of the South African Veterinary Medical Association, 1927, Vol. 1(1), pp. 84-85, List of members; 1929, Vol. 1(3), pp. 77-82, Register of veterinarians of the Union of South Africa.

Posthumus, P.J. Past veterinarians in South Africa (10th edition), Vol.2, [1992].

Robinson, E.M. The development of veterinary bacteriology in South Africa. South African Journal of Science, 1932, Vol. 29, pp. 41-53.

Snyman, P.S. The problem of bovine tuberculosis in the Union of South Africa. Journal of the South African Veterinary Medical Association, 1955, Vol. 26(4), pp. 241-245.

Compiled by: D.W. Verwoerd

Last updated: 2025-12-12 09:42:33