BREAKING NEWS: Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathai dies in Nairobi

Nobel Laureate Prof Wangari Maathai. Photo/FILE

Prof Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace laureate and conservation heroine, has died in Nairobi after a long battle with cancer. She as 71.

The environmentalist and politician died at the Nairobi Hospital at around 10pm on Sunday, officials at her Greenbelt Movement organisation told Nation.co.ke. (SEE In Pictures: Wangari Maathai)

Prof Maathai will be remembered for her fight against the Moi regime’s attempts to build a 60-storey building at Uhuru Park, at the centre of Nairobi city. She next took on powerful individuals in the Moi government who had hived off parts of the Karura forest in the outer fringes of the city.

She also joined mothers of political prisoners in a hunger strike in a quest to force then President Moi to free them. (READERS’ SAY:Share your Wangari Maathai quotes)

The environmentalist later joined politics and was in 2002 elected the Member of Parliament for Tetu, Nyeri District and served as an Assistant Minister in President Kibaki’s first government.

Known for her love for trees, Prof Maathai was in 2004 awarded the Nobel peace prize for her conservation efforts.

She was also a celebrated academic having been the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree.

Prof Maathai got her degree in biological sciences from Mount St Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas in 1964 before earning a Master of Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh two years later.

Her official profile says that she later pursued doctoral studies in Germany and the University of Nairobi (UoN), obtaining a Ph.D in 1971 from the UoN where she also taught veterinary anatomy. She became chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy and an associate professor in 1976 and 1977 respectively.

Source: Nation media