Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey was a Kenyan-British palaeoanthropologist and archaeologist whose work was important in demonstrating that humans evolved in Africa, particularly through discoveries made at Olduvai Gorge with his wife, fellow palaeoanthropologist Mary Leakey.
77 Facts About Louis Leakey
2.
Several members of the Leakey family became prominent scholars themselves.
3.
Louis Leakey encouraged and supported many other PhD candidates, most notably from the University of Cambridge.
4.
Harry Louis Leakey was assigned to an established post of the Church Mission Society among the Kikuyu at Kabete, in the highlands north of Nairobi.
5.
Louis Leakey had a distinguished career in the CMS, becoming canon of the station.
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Louis Leakey had a younger brother, Douglas, and two older sisters, Gladys and Julia.
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The Louis Leakey household came to contain Miss Oakes, Miss Higgenbotham, and Mariamu.
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Louis Leakey grew up, played, and learned to hunt with the native Kikuyus.
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Louis Leakey learned to walk with the distinctive gait of the Kikuyu and speak their language fluently, as did his siblings.
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Louis Leakey was initiated into the Kikuyu ethnic group, an event of which he never spoke, as he was sworn to secrecy.
11.
Louis Leakey requested and was given permission to build and move into a hut, Kikuyu style, at the end of the garden.
12.
Louis Leakey began to collect tools and was further encouraged in this activity by a role model, Arthur Loveridge, the first curator of the Natural History Museum in Nairobi, the predecessor of the Coryndon Museum.
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Louis Leakey's father was a role model: Canon Leakey co-founded East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society.
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In Britain, the Louis Leakey children attended primary school; in Africa, they had a tutor.
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Louis Leakey received a scholarship for his high scores on the entrance exams.
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Louis Leakey matriculated at the University of Cambridge, his father's alma mater, in 1922, intending to become a missionary to British East Africa.
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Louis Leakey frequently told a story about his final exams.
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Louis Leakey applied and was hired to locate the site and manage the administrative details.
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Louis Leakey switched his focus to anthropology, and found a new mentor in Alfred Cort Haddon, head of the Cambridge department.
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In 1926, Louis Leakey graduated with a "double first", or high honours, in anthropology and archaeology.
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Louis Leakey had used some of his preexisting qualifications; for example, Kikuyu was offered and accepted as the second modern language in which he was required to be proficient, even though no one there could test him on it.
22.
From 1925 on Louis Leakey lectured and wrote on African archaeological and palaeontological topics.
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Louis Leakey excavated dozens of sites, undertaking for the first time a systematic study of the artifacts.
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In 1927, Louis Leakey received a visit at a site called Gamble's Cave, near Lake Elmenteita, by two women on a holiday, one of whom was Frida Avern.
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Louis Leakey argued that it must have the date of the bed, which was believed to be 600,000 years, in the mid-Pleistocene.
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Louis Leakey was barred from going back to settle the question by the war and then the terms of the transfer of Tanganyika from Germany to Britain.
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In 1929, Louis Leakey visited Berlin to talk to the now skeptical Reck.
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Louis Leakey's first child, a daughter named Priscilla Muthoni Leakey, was born in 1931.
29.
In November 1931, Louis Leakey led an expedition to Olduvai whose members included Reck, whom Louis Leakey allowed to enter the gorge first.
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Louis Leakey had bet Reck that Louis Leakey would find Acheulean tools within the first 24 hours, which he did.
31.
Louis Leakey did arrive eventually and Louis put her to work.
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Louis Leakey easily found more fossils, which he named Homo kanamensis.
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On his return, Louis Leakey' finds were carefully examined by a committee of 26 scientists and were tentatively accepted as valid.
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Louis Leakey convinced Mary to take on the illustration of his book, and a few months later companionship turned into an affair.
35.
Frida gave birth to Colin in December 1933, and the next month Louis Leakey left her and his newborn son.
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Louis Leakey was not only forced to retract the accusation in his final field report in June 1935 but to recant his support of Reck.
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Louis Leakey' parents continued to urge him to return to Frida, and would pay for everyone in the party but Mary.
38.
Louis Leakey gardened for subsistence and exercise and improved the house and grounds.
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Louis Leakey appealed at last to the Royal Society, who relented with a small grant to continue work on his collection.
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Louis Leakey had already involved himself in Kikuyu tribal affairs in 1928, taking a stand against female genital cutting.
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Louis Leakey returned to Kiambaa near Nairobi and persuaded Senior Chief Koinange, who designated a committee of chiefs, to help him describe the Kikuyu the way they had been.
42.
Louis Leakey fell ill with double pneumonia and was near death for two weeks in the hospital in Nairobi, during which time her mother was sent for.
43.
Louis Leakey got an extension of his grant, which he used partially for fossil-hunting.
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Louis Leakey jumped into the fray as an exponent of the middle ground.
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Louis Leakey traveled the country as a pedlar, reporting on the talk.
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Louis Leakey created a clandestine network using his childhood friends among the Kikuyu.
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Louis Leakey conducted interrogations, analyzed handwriting, wrote radio broadcasts and took on regular police investigations.
48.
Louis Leakey worked in the Coryndon Memorial Museum where Louis joined her as an unpaid honorary curator in 1941.
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Louis Leakey found himself in counter-intelligence work, which he performed with zest and imagination.
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In January 1947 Louis Leakey conducted the first Pan-African Congress of Prehistory at Nairobi.
51.
In 1950, Louis Leakey was awarded an honorary doctorate by Oxford University.
52.
Louis Leakey had attempted to warn Sir Philip Mitchell, governor of the colony, that nocturnal meetings and forced oaths were not Kikuyu customs and foreboded violence, but was ignored.
53.
Louis Leakey was summoned to be a court interpreter, but withdrew after an accusation of mistranslation because of prejudice against the defendant.
54.
Louis Leakey sided with the settlers, serving as their spokesman and intelligence officer, helping to ferret out bands of guerrillas.
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Louis Leakey recommended a multi-racial government, land reform in the highlands, a wage hike for the Kikuyu, and many other reforms, most of which were eventually adopted.
56.
Louis Leakey opted for Zinjanthropus, a decision opposed by Wilfrid Le Gros Clark, but one which attracted the attention of Melville Bell Grosvenor, president of the National Geographic Society.
57.
In 1960, Louis Leakey appointed Mary director of excavation at Olduvai.
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Louis Leakey brought in a staff of Kamba assistants, including Kamoya Kimeu, who later discovered many of eastern Africa's most famous fossils.
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At "Jonny's site", FLK-NN, Jonathan Louis Leakey discovered two skull fragments without the Australopithecine sagittal crest, which Mary connected with Broom's and Robinson's Telanthropus.
60.
In 1961 Louis Leakey got a salary as well as a grant from the National Geographic Society and turned over the acting directorship of Coryndon to a subordinate.
61.
Louis Leakey created the Centre for Prehistory and Paleontology on the same grounds, moved his collections to it, and appointed himself director.
62.
Louis Leakey opened another excavation at Fort Ternan on Lake Victoria.
63.
In 1962 Louis Leakey was visiting Olduvai when Ndibo Mbuika discovered the first tooth of Homo habilis at MNK.
64.
In 1963, Louis Leakey obtained funds from the National Geographic Society and commenced archaeological excavations with Simpson.
65.
The geologist Vance Haynes had made three visits to the site in 1973 and had claimed that the artifacts found by Louis Leakey were naturally formed geofacts.
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Louis Leakey personally chose three female researchers, Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas, calling them The Trimates.
67.
Louis Leakey encouraged and supported many other PhD candidates, most notably from Cambridge University.
68.
Louis Leakey believed that women were better at studying primates than man, as shown in the book Primates.
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Louis Leakey did not excavate any longer, as he was impaired by arthritis, for which he had a hip replacement in 1968.
70.
Louis Leakey raised funds and directed his family and associates.
71.
Louis Leakey had his first heart attacks and spent six months in the hospital.
72.
Richard began to assume more and more of his father's responsibilities, which Louis Leakey resisted, but in the end was forced to accept.
73.
On 1 October 1972, Louis Leakey had a heart attack in Vanne Goodall's apartment in London.
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Mary wanted to cremate Louis Leakey and fly the ashes back to Nairobi.
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Louis Leakey' body was flown home and interred at Limuru, near the graves of his parents.
76.
Louis Leakey was married to Mary Leakey, who made the noteworthy discovery of fossil footprints at Laetoli.
77.
Louis Leakey is the father of paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey and the botanist Colin Leakey.