Wangari Maathai, 1940–2011

The woman who fought for Africa’s forests

Wangari Maathai was a woman of many firsts. The Kenyan environmentalist was the first woman from central or east Africa to obtain a doctorate, the first female professor at the University of Nairobi, and the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Wangari Muta Maathai was born in Nyeri, “in the foothills of Mount Kenya,” and the unsullied environment of her childhood was a lifelong inspiration for her work, said The New York Times. A “star student,” she won a scholarship to Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kan., and later obtained her doctorate in veterinary anatomy at the University of Nairobi.

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