David Goodall, a 104-year-old Australian scientist has ended his life at a clinic in Switzerland using lethal injection, which is forbidden in his country.
The academic died at 0:30 GMT at the Life Cycle clinic in Basel, from an infusion of Nembutal, a barbiturate, said Philip Nitschke, founder of Exit International, the group which helped him take his own life.
Goodall was born in London in 1914 and moved in 1948 to Australia, where he was a lecturer at the University of Melbourne. An expert in arid shrublands, he also worked in Britain and held academic posts at US universities, according to Reuters.
Shortly before his death, he said he was "happy to end" his life.
"My life has been rather poor for the past year or so and I'm very happy to end it," he said.
"All the publicity that this has been receiving can only, I think, help the cause of euthanasia for the elderly, which I want."
Assisted suicide has been legal in Switzerland since the 1940s. The Netherlands legalized euthanasia in 2002 for patients considered to be suffering unbearable pain with no cure.
In many countries, however, physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia are illegal.
