Angela Dorothea Merkel is a German politician. She has been serving as the Chancellor of Germany since 2005, the first woman to hold this office. She also served as the Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a post which she held from 2000 to 2018. A former research scientist, she holds a doctorate in physical chemistry and has worked as a researcher and published several papers. She became interested in politics during the late-1980s and joined the ‘Democratic Awakening’ party, which was formed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. She briefly served as the deputy spokesperson of the new pre-unification caretaker government under Lothar de Maizière. Following German reunification in 1990, she won a seat in ‘Bundestag’ (Germany's lower house) for Stralsund-Nordvorpommern-Rügen from the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Her political career thrived over the years and she went on to serve as the Minister for Women and Youth before becoming the Minister of Environment and Nuclear Safety. Articulate, intelligent, and hardworking, Merkel did not take long to establish herself as a prominent political figure in the country.  She was eventually appointed the Secretary-General of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany. She then went on to successfully challenge Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in the 2005 national elections and assumed the office of the Chancellor of Germany in November 2005.