Nobel Peace Prize Winner Wangari Maatha

But this is the first time the peace prize will go to an African woman. It is also the first time someone within the environmental movement has been recognized at such a high level. The Nobel Committee said: "Peace on earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment."

But she does not speak out only about the environment. In August, she called the AIDS virus a biological weapon to control black people. Later, she said her comments were meant to get people to ask questions and not think of AIDS as a "curse from God."

Wangari Maathai will receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on December tenth. She will also receive almost one point four million dollars in prize money.

Now, she is assistant minister of environment, natural resources and wildlife.

Professor Maathai is sixty-four years old. She studied in the United States and Kenya. She is believed to have been the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree. She became a professor of animal science at the University of Nairobi. But her activism angered the former government in Kenya. She was beaten and arrested.