Cecilia Wangechi Mwathi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
15 May 1963
Cecilia Wangechi Mwathi | |
|---|---|
| Born | Cecilia Wangechi Mwathi 15 May 1963 |
| Died | 17 August 2011 (aged 48) Nanyuki, Kenya |
| Citizenship | Kenyan |
| Known for | First woman in Kenya to become a mathematics professor |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematician, union activist |
Cecilia Wangechi Mwathi (15 May 1963 – 17 August 2011) was a Kenyan mathematician and union activist. She was the first woman in Kenya to become a mathematics professor,[1] and was known both for her activism for higher education and for inspiring Kenyan girls to study science, technology, and mathematics.[2]
Mwathi was born on 15 May 1963 in Kaigonde, a village in Kenya near Gichira,[1] as the fifth of eight children in a poor family. She was educated in Gichira,[3] having to walk 5km barefoot to reach the school.[4] She then went to Mugoiri Girls High School and Chania High School before studying mathematics education at Kenyatta University, where she was awarded a bachelor's degree in 1987.[3] In the next years, she worked as a high school teacher at Garissa High School and then Kenya High School.[4] Returning to Kenyatta University in 1991, she earned a master's degree in mathematics in 1992.[3]
From 1995 through 1998, she was a doctoral student at the University of Zimbabwe, while working as a mathematics instructor in Kenya. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Zimbabwe in 1998;[3] her dissertation was Groups of Units in Algebraic Number Fields of Fourth and Eighth Degrees, and concerned algebraic number theory.[5]
