George Saitoti - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

George Saitoti was born on 3rd August 1945 and brought up in Maasailand, where he spent his childhood herding cattle in line with the Masai culture, and attending school. He attended Ololua Primary School, Kajiado where he acquired his basic education in the 1950s. Between 1960 and 1963, he secured a place at Mang’u High School in Thika where he attained his high school education. He joined the ranks of Mang’u High School’s highly decorated alumni including Kenya’s third President, Mwai Kibaki, former Vice President Moody Awori, Catholic Archbishop Ndingi Mwana-a-Nzeki, the late Environment Minister John Michuki, the late Trade Unionist and former Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Tom Mboya, and late Cardinal Maurice Michael Otunga. Saitoti spent a brief while in the United States of America, where he received his undergraduate education at Brandeis University between 1963 and 1967. During his time there, he was on the prestigious Wien Scholarship, specializing in Mathematics and Economics. His colleagues at the time remember that he enjoyed spending time in Cholmondeleys (the coffeehouse in the Castle) and excelled at high jump, ranking as one of the best in New England. In 1988, Saitoti received the first Brandeis Alumni Achievement Award, the highest honor the University bestows upon its' graduates.

Saitoti later moved to the United Kingdom where he acquired a Master of Science (MSc) degree in Mathematics from the University of Sussex, Brighton. He enrolled for his doctoral studies at the University of Warwick where he finally acquired his PhD in Mathematics in 1972; writing his dissertation under the supervision of Professor Luke Hodgkin in the area of algebraic topology under the topic: Mod-2 K-Theory of the Second Iterated Loop Space on a Sphere.