Mary Leakey

Mary Douglas Leakey (born Nicol, 6 February 1913 – 9 December 1996) was a British paleoanthropologist. She is known for finding the first fossilized skull of *Proconsul*, an extinct ape thought to be a human ancestor, and the robust *Zinjanthropus* skull at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. For most of her career, she worked alongside her husband, Louis Leakey, at Olduvai, where they unearthed fossils of ancient hominines and early hominins, along with the stone tools those hominins made. Leakey created a classification system for the stone tools found at Olduvai. She also discovered the Laetoli footprints and, at that same site, found hominin fossils over 3.75 million years old. Over her career, she identified fifteen new animal species and helped establish a new genus.

After her husband died in 1972, Leakey took over as director of excavations at Olduvai. She carried on the family tradition in paleoanthropology by training her son, Richard, in the field.

Born in London to Erskine Edward Nicol and Cecilia Marion Frere, Mary’s family moved often—through the United States, Italy, and Egypt—as her father painted watercolours to sell back in England. These travels sparked her interest in Egyptology. On her mother’s side, she was a great-great-great-granddaughter of antiquarian John Frere, sharing that ancestry with historian and archaeologist Sheppard Frere. The Frere family were active abolitionists in the British colonial empire during the 1800s, founding several communities for freed slaves. Three of these—Freretown, Kenya; Freretown, South Africa; and Freretown, India—still existed when Leakey published her 1984 autobiography.

The Nicols spent much time in southern France, where Mary became fluent in French. When she was twelve, in 1925, the family stayed at Les Eyzies while French archaeologist Élie Peyrony was excavating a cave nearby. Peyrony’s methods were not scientific by later standards, and he often missed the significance of his finds. Mary got permission to sift through his discarded material, collecting points, scrapers, and blades, and developed her first classification system. The family later moved to Cabrerets, where Mary met Abbé Lemozi, the village priest, who became her mentor. Together they toured Pech Merle cave to see prehistoric paintings of bison and horses.

In spring 1926, when Mary was thirteen, her father died of cancer. She and her mother returned to London, where Mary was sent to a Catholic convent school. She later claimed she never passed an exam there. Despite speaking fluent French, she struggled in French class because her teacher disliked her provincial accent. She was expelled for refusing to recite poetry, then expelled from a second convent school after causing an explosion in a chemistry lab. Her mother then hired two tutors, who failed, and later a governess.

Mary’s interests were in illustration and archaeology, but her poor academic record made university admission impossible. Her mother contacted a professor at Oxford, who advised against applying. Mary had no further contact with Oxford until it awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1981. She moved with her mother to Kensington, where she attended lectures in archaeology at University College and the London Museum, studying under Mortimer Wheeler. She applied to join summer excavations. Wheeler accepted her first, for a dig at the Roman site of Verulamium in St Albans. Her next dig was at Hembury, a Neolithic site, under Dorothy Liddell, who trained her for four years until 1934. Her illustrations for Liddell caught the attention of Gertrude Caton Thompson, and in late 1932, Mary began working as an illustrator for Caton Thompson’s book *The Desert Fayoum*.

Through Caton Thompson, Mary met Louis Leakey, who needed an illustrator for his book *Adam’s Ancestors* (1934). While working together, they became romantically involved. Louis was still married, and his son Collin had just been born when they moved in together. They married in 1936 after Frida Leakey divorced him, a move that ended his career at Cambridge University. Mary and Louis had three sons: Jonathan (1940), Richard (1944), and Philip (1949). A fourth child, a daughter, died in infancy. The boys spent much of their early childhood at various anthropological sites, and the family excavated together whenever possible. The children grew up with the same love of freedom their parents had. Mary would not let guests shoo away the pet hyraxes that helped themselves to food and drink at the dinner table. In her autobiography, she rarely mentioned her pregnancies or the challenges of raising children in Kenya. She smoked heavily—first cigarettes, then cigars—and usually dressed as if she were finishing an excavation.

While her husband was alive, they published many joint findings.