This article gives a brief outline of the life of Sergio Salbany (1941–2005) and of his mathematical career, coupled with his social outreach and political activity in South Africa until 1980, in Zimbabwe 1981–1992, in Botswana 1993–1997, and finally again in South Africa 1997–2005. We include a list of his mathematical publications. Salbany was best known for his research in the area of asymmetric topology, comprising topics such as bitopological spaces, quasi-uniform spaces, ordered spaces and quasi-pseudometric spaces. His publications in this area were essentially the first that explicitly described the functors that served to clarify the structure and aims of the then novel theory.