Ecologist, feminist and eccentric Val Plumwood has died of a suspected snake bite on her rural property near Canberra, news reports said Monday. ( dpa )
Plumwood, who famously survived a crocodile attack 23 years ago, was 67.
She made her name working at the University of California's Berkeley campus and was better known in the United States than in her native Australia.
Plumwood spent time at Canberra's Australian National University, Sydney University, North Carolina State University and the University of Montana.
"She was really the wisest and silliest person I have ever known," friend Jackie French told Australia's AAP news agency.
Fellow academic Suzanne Bellamy said Plumwood left a huge legacy.
"Val was a real original thinker, a puncher of a hole through conventions," she said. "I'd say that she would want to be remembered primarily as a philosopher - as a great Western philosopher - and as a women that is not an easy thing to be."