Layla Ben Salah

Tunisian engineer who pioneered solar energy solutions for rural communities in the mid-20th century

Layla Ben Salah (1918-1969) was a trailblazing engineer whose solar-powered irrigation systems brought modern agriculture to Tunisia's desert regions. Educated at the École Polytechnique in Paris, she returned home in 1945 to address the country's water scarcity issues using her expertise in thermodynamics. Her breakthrough came in 1953 with the invention of the "Ben Salah Solar Still", a low-cost distillation system that converted seawater into drinking water using only sunlight. Over 200 of these units were deployed along Tunisia's coast, providing fresh water to 50,000+ residents.

Building on this success, Ben Salah developed the first solar-powered irrigation network in 1958, enabling farmers in the Sahara to cultivate crops year-round. Her innovative parabolic reflectors increased solar energy efficiency by 40%, a feat that earned her the UNESCO Science Prize in 1962. Despite her technical brilliance, Ben Salah faced persistent gender discrimination in male-dominated engineering circles, documented in her unpublished memoir fragments housed at Institut National de l'Archéologie.

Her legacy endures through Tunisia's National Solar Energy Institute, which continues to improve her designs. Modern engineers cite her work as foundational to contemporary solar agriculture projects in arid regions, proving her assertion that 'the sun is the only resource no one can monopolize.'