Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai (1940-2011) was a Kenyan biologist, the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctoral degree, completing a PhD in veterinary anatomy at the University of Nairobi in 1971, and the first woman to chair an academic department and become an associate professor at that university. Her scientific training in the biological sciences underpinned the Green Belt Movement, which she founded in 1977 to organize Kenyan women in planting trees to combat deforestation, soil erosion and the loss of local water sources, work grounded explicitly in an ecological understanding of how tree cover regulates soil and water systems. The movement grew to plant tens of millions of trees across Kenya and inspired similar grassroots reforestation programs elsewhere in Africa. In 2004 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace, the first African woman to receive a Nobel Prize of any kind.