Eni Njoku is of Igbo origin, He was born on November 6, 1917 in Ebem, Ohafia, Abia State. He was educated at Ebem Primary School and attended the Hope Waddell Training Institute, Calabar from 1933 to 1936. He attended the Yaba Higher SchoolLagos from 1937 to 1939 to acclaim a tertiary education certificate. Eni Njoku studied botany at the University of Manchester in England. He graduated with a first-class honors degree in 1947 and obtained his M.A. degree the following year. In 1954, he obtained his doctorate from the University of London. When he returned to Nigeria, Eni Njoku took up a teaching appointment at the University of Ibadann as a lecturer. Later he became a senior lecturer and then professor. He was head of the department of botany, and Dean of the faculty of science. He was chairman of the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria in 1956. In 1962, he became the first vice-chancellor of the University of Lagos. Following a major crisis in 1965 over his re-appointment, he resigned and became a visiting professor at Michigan State University, United States. In 1966, Njoku was appointed vice-chancellor of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka where he remained until the outbreak of the civil war in 1967. Njoku served on the boards of the , the United NationsAdvisory Committee on the Application of Science and Technology as well as the UNESCO Advisory Committee in Natural Sciences. He also served on the councils of the and Zaire. He wrote several books and articles in international journals. He received the honorary D.Sc. degree from the University of Nigeria in 1964, and in 1966 Michigan State University conferred on him an honorary doctor of laws degree and in 1973 Unilag awarded its first vice-chancellor an honorary D.Sc. degree.
Selected works
Entekhabi, D., Njoku, E. G., O'Neill, P. E., Kellogg, K. H., Crow, W. T., Edelstein, W. N. & Kimball, J.. The soil moisture active passive mission.
Njoku, E. G., Jackson, T. J., Lakshmi, V., Chan, T. K., & Nghiem, S. V.. Soil moisture retrieval from AMSR-E.
Njoku, E. G., & Entekhabi, D.. Passive microwave remote sensing of soil moisture.
Njoku, E. G., & Li, L.. Retrieval of land surface parameters using passive microwave measurements at 6-18 GHz.
Entekhabi, D., Nakamura, H., & Njoku, E. G.. Solving the inverse problem for soil moisture and temperature profiles by sequential assimilation of multifrequency remotely sensed observations.
Njoku, E. G., & Kong, J. A.. Theory for passive microwave remote sensing of near‐surface soil moisture.
Njoku, Eni G., et al. "Global survey and statistics of radio-frequency interference in AMSR-E land observations.
Reichle, R. H., Koster, R. D., Liu, P., Mahanama, S. P., Njoku, E. G., & Owe, M.. Comparison and assimilation of global soil moisture retrievals from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for the Earth Observing System and the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer.
Njoku, E. G., & Chan, S. K.. Vegetation and surface roughness effects on AMSR-E land observations.
Entekhabi, D., Njoku, E. G., Houser, P., Spencer, M., Doiron, T., Kim, Y. & Jackson, T. J.. The hydrosphere state satellite mission: An earth system pathfinder for global mapping of soil moisture and land freeze/thaw.
Entekhabi, D., Njoku, E. G., Houser, P., Spencer, M., Doiron, T., Kim, Y. & Jackson, T. J.. The hydrosphere state satellite mission: An earth system pathfinder for global mapping of soil moisture and land freeze/thaw.
Ochsner, T. E., Cosh, M. H., Cuenca, R. H., Dorigo, W. A., Draper, C. S., Hagimoto, Y. & Zreda, M.. State of the art in large‐scale soil moisture monitoring.
Njoku, E. G., Wilson, W. J., Yueh, S. H., Dinardo, S. J., Li, F. K., Jackson, T. J. & Bolten, J.. Observations of soil moisture using a passive and active low-frequency microwave airborne sensor during SGP99.
