Wangari Maathai
Full name Wangari Muta Maathai was a Kenyan politician and environmental activist who was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize for Peace, becoming the first black African woman to win a Nobel Prize.
Her work was often considered both unwelcome and subversive in her own country, where her outspokenness constituted stepping far outside traditional gender roles, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.
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Educated in the United States at Mount St. Scholastica College (now Benedictine College; B.S. in biology, 1964) and at the University of Pittsburgh (M.S., 1966), Maathi received a Ph.D. at the University of Nairobi, In 1971 effectively becoming the first woman in either East or Central Africa to earn a doctorate.
She taught in the Department of Veterinary Anatomy at the University of Nairobi after graduation, and in 1977 she became chair of the department.
That same year she started and led the Green Belt Movement, which aims to counter deforestation. The Green Belt Movement, an organization had by the early 21st century planted some 30 million trees.
