A RADICAL scientist who gave up her lab coat for a lifetime helping poor African women plant trees has won the Nobel peace prize.
Last Friday, Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan, became the first African woman to win the prize for her 30-year stewardship of the Green Belt Movement. She recently took a job as assistant environment minister in Kenya’s new reformist government.
Maathai, the first woman in East Africa to get a biology doctorate, told Â鶹´«Ã½ four years ago that her university had forced her to choose between academia and activism (22 July 2000, p 42). She chose…
