Angela Merkel

German politician, chancellor since November 2005. Merkel was born Angela Dorothea Kasner in Hamburg as the daughter of a Lutheran pastor his wife, a teacher of English and Latin. In 1954 her father took a post in East Germany, where Merkel grew up. She studied physics In Leipzig from 1973, and married fellow student Ulrich Merkel. Merkel worked at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin-Adlershof from 1978 to 1990, where in 1984 she met her second husband Joachim Sauer, whom she married in 1998. Merkel graduated with a PhD in physical chemistry in 1986. In 1989, Merkel got involved in the growing democracy movement after the fall of the Berlin Wall, joining the new party Democratic Awakening. At the first post-reunification general election in December 1990, she was elected to the Bundestag. Her party merged with the west German CDU and she became Minister for Women and Youth in Helmut Kohl's 3rd cabinet. In 1994, she was made Minister for the Environment and Nuclear Safety, which gave her greater political visibility and a platform on which to build her political career. As one of Kohl's protégées and his youngest cabinet minister, she was referred to by Kohl as "mein Mädchen" ("my girl"). When the Kohl government was defeated in the 1998 general election, Merkel was named Secretary-General of the CDU. On 30 May 2005, Merkel won the CDU/CSU nomination as challenger to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of the SPD in the 2005 national elections. On 22 November 2005, Merkel assumed the office of Chancellor of Germany following a stalemate election that resulted in a grand coalition with the SPD. She was re-elected in 2009 with a larger majority and was able to form a governing coalition with the FDP. Link to Wikipedia biography