Obituary: Jimmy Carter, a modest president with a rich legacy

Jimmy Carter, the 39th U.S. president, celebrated for his humanitarian work and early focus on environmental issues, has died aged 100.

A peanut farmer who became president, the centrist Democrat defeated incumbent Republican Gerald Ford in the 1976 U.S. election. He was the first president to be inaugurated with a nickname – his full name is James Earl Carter Jr. – but was defeated in a landslide four years later as voters embraced Republican challenger and former actor Ronald Reagan.

In the White House from 1977 to 1981, he struggled with economic headwinds domestically and the Iran hostage crisis but scored a number of foreign policy successes.

The 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, based on the 1978 Camp David accords that he helped broker, ended a state of war between the two Middle Eastern neighbors. He also pushed through a treaty to transfer the Panama Canal to the control of Panama, despite enduring criticisms, and fulfilled a campaign pledge in 1979 by completing negotiations on the establishment of full diplomatic ties between the U.S. and China.

However, the popularity of Carter, who is also remembered for creating the departments of energy and education, was hit by double-digit inflation, with interest rates exceeding 20 percent and gas prices soaring. 

The 444-day-long Iran hostage crisis, which began when the U.S. embassy in Tehran was stormed in 1979 and more than 50 American hostages were taken, and ended the day Reagan took office, consumed the end of Carter's term and helped doom his chances of reelection, though he was also damaged by a primary challenge from Senator Ted Kennedy for the Democratic nomination in 1980.

Support for Carter's tackling of the crisis faded in April 1980 when a commando raid failed to rescue the hostages, and eight U.S. soldiers died in an aircraft accident in the Iranian desert. Iran held the hostages until minutes after Reagan, who beat Carter in 44 of the 50 states in the November 1980 election, took the oath of office.

Born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, one of four children of a farmer and shopkeeper, Carter graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946, served in the nuclear submarine program and left to manage the family peanut farming business before becoming legislator and then governor in his home state.

Carter left the White House in 1981 and devoted himself to humanitarian and climate issues, often working hand in hand with his wife Rosalynn, who passed away in 2023. They were married for 77 years.

"Over the years, we became not only friends and lovers, but partners," the Washington Post quoted Rosalynn as saying at her husband's 90th birthday celebration. "He has always thought I could do anything." The pair had known each other for all of Rosalynn's life: she also grew up in Plains and was a childhood friend of Carter's younger sister, Ruth.

Known for a modest lifestyle – he also sought to reduce the pomp of the presidency – after leaving the White House the couple returned to the same two-bedroom house in Plains they lived in before entering politics.

A devout Christian, Carter lived longer after his term in office than any other U.S. president, and acknowledged that he was regarded as having a better record out of office than in.

He gained global acclaim as a tireless human rights advocate, a voice for the disenfranchised and a leader in the fight against hunger and poverty, winning the respect that eluded him in the White House. "I can't deny I'm a better ex-president than I was a president," he told reporters in 2005.

His nonprofit organization – the Carter Center – has helped tackle health emergencies and promote peace around the world, from Ethiopia and Eritrea to Bosnia and Haiti. He was also critical of U.S. foreign policy at times, calling the invasion of Iraq in 2003 one of the most "gross and damaging mistakes our nation ever made."

Carter was also an early proponent of climate issues, and installed solar panels on the White House in 1979 as a symbol of his plan to boost U.S. use of sustainable energy. Amid high gas prices, he said America's "energy crisis" was "the moral equivalent of war" and urged the country to embrace conservation. "Ours is the most wasteful nation on Earth," he told Americans in 1977.

In recent years, Carter experienced several health issues including melanoma that spread to his liver and brain. He decided to receive hospice care in Plains, the town of his birth, in Georgia, the state he governed, in February 2023 instead of undergoing additional medical intervention.

Jimmy Carter passed away at his home in Plains, Georgia, on Sunday.

(With input from agencies)