Thomas Odhiambo

Thomas Risley Odhiambo was born in Mombasa in 1931 and educated at mission schools and then at Makerere in Uganda, where he studied biology. His first job was as an agricultural officer in the Uganda colonial service, dealing with insect pests on farms, which is where his interest in insects turned from academic to practical.

He went to Cambridge in his late twenties, took a degree in natural sciences and then a doctorate in insect physiology, finishing in 1965. He was offered work in Britain. He went home instead, to the new University of Nairobi, where he was appointed to lead its zoology department and where he found almost no research money and very few trained colleagues.

His answer was to build an institution. In 1970 he founded the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Nairobi, arguing that tropical insects, which destroy a large share of African harvests and spread malaria, sleeping sickness and river blindness, should be studied where they lived. He spent years persuading foreign donors that this was a better use of money than sending Africans abroad. The centre grew into one of the most respected research bodies on the continent, and it trained scientists from across Africa.

He also founded the African Academy of Sciences in 1985 and won the Albert Einstein World Award of Science in 1987. He died in Nairobi in 2003.