Louis Leakey Biography and List of Works

British / Kenyan archaeologist and anthropologist who became famous for his academic work centred on human origins. Louis Leakey, his wife Mary, and their second son Richard made the key discoveries that shaped our understanding of the first human beings. Richard Leakey and his wife Maeve sustain a family legacy of research that is now, with the work of their daughter Louise, three generations old.

"To me it's a question of being able to look backward and give the present a root... To give meaning to where we are today, we need to look at where we have come from."
(Richard Leakey, in National Geographic, February 1998)

Louis Leakey was born in Kabete, British East Africa, (now Kenya), into a missionary family. He graduated from Cambridge, and set out to prove Darwin's theory that Africa was humankind's homeland. Between the years 1926 and 1935 he led a series of expeditions in East Africa in search of man's fossil ancestors.

In 1933 Leakey met and fell in love with 20-year-old Mary Nicol. They married three years later. In 1945 Leakey became the curator of the Coryndon Memorial Museum in Nairobi. As a conservationist, Leakey was active in promoting game preserves in East Africa. His interests and writings were wide, including all aspects of African natural history, primate behaviour and the origins of man.

The Leakeys expeditions to Olduvai Gorge produced several important discoveries of early primate fossils, named Zinjanthropus (now called Australopithecus boisei), which Mary Leakey found in 1959. The excavations brought to light a rich fossil record. The discovery and its subsequent detailed publication have been of crucial importance to the study of human origins. When Louis began spending less and less time at Olduvai in order to concentrate on raising funds and lecturing, the place became Mary's domain where she spent most of the next 25 years. In 1978 Mary found a trail of clear ancient hominid footprints preserved in volcanic ash at a site in Tanzania called Laetoli. The footprints belonged to a new hominid species, best represented by the 3.2 million-year-old Lucy skeleton, which was found at Hadar, Ethiopia.

From 1961 to 1964 the Leakeys and their son Jonathan unearthed fossils of Homo habilis, "handy man", the oldest known primate with human characteristics, discovered in 1967 Kenyapithecus africanus. They also discovered evidence of human habitation in California, more than 50 000 years old.

Louis Leakey died in London on October 3, 1969. In 1972 his son Richard Leakey, who directed The National Museum of Kenya, reported the discovery of the 1.8 million-year old skull of a modern human from Koobi Fora. Three years later he discoverd the skull of Homo erectus, estimated at 1.6 million years old, and in 1984 he and another palaeontologist discovered a virtually complete Homo erectus skeleton.

Richard Leakey abandoned fossil hunting for wildlife conservation in 1989. President Daniel Arap Moi appointed Leakey head of what is now the Kenya Wildlife Service. He resigned in 1994 amid politically motivated accusations of mismanagement, only to be reinstated by Moi 5 years later. As a result of an airplane crash, Leakey lost both legs below the knees, but he has continued his scientific explorations. Mary Leakey died in Nairobi on December 9, 1996, at the age of 83.

Leakey, Mary (Douglas) - archaeologist. She met and married L.S.B. Leakey while preparing drawings for his book ADAM'S ANCESTORS, and moved to Kenya. In 1948 she discovered Proconsul africanus at Lake Victoria and in 1976 she found fossilised hominid footprints during her excavation at Laetoli. Mary Leakey's works include OLDUVAI GORGE: MY SEARCH FOR EARLY MAN (1979) and an autobiography DISCLOSING THE PAST (1984).

For further reading: Leakey's Luck: the Life of L.S.B. Leakey 1903-1972 by S. Cole (1975); Human Origins: Louis Leakey and the East African Evidence by G.L. Isaac & E.R. McCown (1976); The Making of Mankind by Richard Leakey (1981); Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human by Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin (1992)

ADAM'S ANCESTORS, (1934)
STONE AGE AFRICA, (1936)
OLDUVAI GORGE, (1951)
ANIMALS IN AFRICA, (1953)
MAU MAU AND THE KIKUYU, (1954)
OLDUVAI GORGE, (1951)