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October 14, 2004

Pitt Alum Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Pitt graduate Wangari Muta Maathai has been named the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner, the second straight year a Pitt alum has won a Nobel Prize.

A 1966 biological sciences master’s degree graduate at Pitt, Maathai is deputy minister in Kenya’s Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Wildlife.

In 1977, she founded the Green Belt Movement, which mobilized African women to plant more than 30 million trees across the continent in an attempt to stem deforestation.

The Nobel committee honored her contribution to peace through “a holistic approach to sustainable development, which embraced democracy, human rights and women’s rights in particular.”

Last year Paul C. Lauterbur, who earned a Ph.D. in chemistry at Pitt in 1962, shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Sir Peter Mansfield of the University of Nottingham.

Filed under: Feature,Volume 37 Issue 4

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