Dr. Letitia Obeng, Ghana’s first female scientist, passed away on 23 March 2023 at the age of 98, leaving behind a legacy of groundbreaking achievements in science, education, and environmental leadership.

Born in January 1925, Dr. Obeng began her early education at Kwahu-Abetifi before completing her secondary studies at Achimota School in 1946. With no university in the Gold Coast at the time, she pursued higher education in the United Kingdom, earning a government scholarship to study at the University of Birmingham.

There, she became the first Ghanaian woman to earn a Bachelor of Science in Zoology and Botany in 1952. She later completed a Master’s in Parasitology (1962) and a PhD from the University of Liverpool in 1964.

Dr. Obeng’s pioneering career included a tenure as a lecturer and the first female scientist at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) between 1952 and 1959. She also became the first scientist at the National Research Council of Ghana (now CSIR), where she established the Institute of Aquatic Biology. Her leadership extended to becoming the first female president of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006.

Her influence reached global levels when she joined the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 1974, later serving as Director of the UNEP Regional Office for Africa.

She received numerous awards, including the CSIR Distinguished Career and Service to Science and Technology Award in 1997, an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in 2018, and Ghana’s highest national honour, the Order of the Star of Ghana, in 2006.

Dr. Obeng’s legacy is commemorated in Ghana with the Letitia Obeng Block at CSIR, while a meeting room in Liverpool’s Padding Village also bears her name. She is remembered as a trailblazer who inspired generations of scientists and broke barriers for women in science both in Ghana and internationally.