28 Facts About Mary Leakey

Mary Leakey discovered the robust Zinjanthropus skull at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, eastern Africa.

Mary Leakey developed a system for classifying the stone tools found at Olduvai.

Mary Leakey discovered the Laetoli footprints, and at the Laetoli site she discovered hominin fossils that were more than 3.75 million years old.

Mary Leakey brought about the naming of a new genus.

In 1972, after the death of her husband, Mary Leakey became director of excavations at Olduvai.

Mary Leakey maintained the Leakey family tradition of palaeoanthropology by training her son, Richard, in the field.

Mary Leakey was born on 6 February 1913, in London, England to Erskine Edward Nicol and Cecilia Marion Nicol.

Mary Leakey began to develop an enthusiasm for Egyptology during these travel.

On her mother's side, Mary Leakey was a 3rd great-granddaughter of antiquarian John Frere and shared this same ancestry with historian and archaeologist Sheppard Frere.

Three of these communities were still in existence when Mary Leakey published her 1984 autobiography: Freretown, Kenya; Freretown, South Africa; and Freretown, India.

The Nicols spent much of their time in southern France where young Mary Leakey became fluent in French.

In 1925, when Mary Leakey was 12, the Nicols stayed at the commune, Les Eyzies, at a time when Elie Peyrony, a French archaeologist and prehistorian, was excavating one of the caves there.

Mary Leakey received permission to go through the remnants of his dig and this was where her interests in prehistory and archaeology were sparked.

Mary Leakey was placed in a local Catholic convent to be educated, and she later boasted of never passing an examination there.

Mary Leakey was expelled for refusing to recite poetry, and was later expelled from a second convent school for causing an explosion in a chemistry laboratory.

Mary Leakey's mother contacted a professor at Oxford University about possible admission, and was encouraged not to apply, as it would be a waste of her time.

Mary Leakey had no further contact with the university until it awarded her an honorary doctoral degree in 1951.

The small family moved to Kensington, in West London, where, though unregistered, Mary Leakey attended lectures in archaeology and related subjects at University College and at the London Museum, where she studied under Mortimer Wheeler.

Mary Leakey applied to work on a number of summer excavations.

Mary Leakey was still married and his son Collin had just been born when they moved in with each other.

Mary and Louis Leakey had three sons: Jonathan, born in 1940, Richard in 1944, and Philip in 1949.

Mary Leakey smoked a lot, first cigarettes and then cigars, and usually dressed as though completing an excavation.

Louis Mary Leakey died on 1 October 1972 of a heart attack.

Mary Leakey continued with the family's archaeological work, becoming a respected figure in paleoanthropology of her own right.

Mary Leakey died on 9 December 1996, in Nairobi, Kenya, at the age of 83.

In October 1948, Mary Leakey discovered a Proconsul africanus skull on Rusinga Island.

Mary Leakey recorded and published the Kondoa Irangi Rock Paintings in central Tanzania.

Mary Leakey was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1979.