Richard Leakey

Richard Erskine Frere Leakey was born on 19 December 1944 in Nairobi. As a child, he lived there with his parents, Louis and Mary Leakey, and his brothers Jonathan and Philip. The boys had an active upbringing, keeping ponies and belonging to the Langata Pony Club, which sometimes held gatherings at the Leakey home. His parents founded the Dalmatian Club of East Africa and won a prize in 1957. The household also included dogs and other pets. The Leakey brothers joined in games where adults and children tried to imitate early humans, chasing springhare and small antelope on foot on the Serengeti, and driving lions and jackals away from kills.

In 1956, at age eleven, Leakey fell from his horse and fractured his skull, nearly dying. This accident saved his parents' marriage. Louis had been considering leaving Mary for his secretary, Rosalie Osborn. While bedridden, Leakey begged his father not to leave, which decided the matter. Louis ended the relationship, and the family lived harmoniously for a few more years.

Leakey chose to support himself, borrowing £500 from his parents for a Land Rover, and went into the trapping and skeleton supply business with Kamoya Kimeu. He was already a skilled horseman, outdoorsman, Land Rover mechanic, amateur archaeologist, and expedition leader, and he learned to identify bones—skills that pointed toward a career he resisted because his father had taken that path. The bone business became a safari business in 1961. In 1962, he earned a private pilot license and led tours to Olduvai Gorge. During a casual aerial survey, he noticed the potential of Lake Natron's shores for paleontology. He searched for fossils by Land Rover but found none until his parents assigned Glynn Isaac to accompany him. Louis was impressed with their finds and gave them National Geographic funding for a month-long expedition. They explored near Peninj, where Leakey handled administrative details. Bored, he returned to Nairobi temporarily, but at that moment Kamoya Kimeu discovered a fossil of *Australopithecus boisei*. A second expedition left Leakey feeling excluded from the scientific analysis.

In 1964, on his second Lake Natron expedition, Leakey met archaeologist Margaret Cropper. When she returned to England, he followed to study for a degree and get to know her better. He completed his high school requirements in six months; Margaret earned her degree at the University of Edinburgh. He passed college entrance exams, but in 1965 they married and returned to Kenya. His father offered him a job at the Centre for Prehistory and Palaeontology. He excavated at Lake Baringo and continued his photographic safari business, earning enough to buy a house in Karen, a Nairobi suburb. Their daughter Anna was born in 1969, the same year Leakey and Margaret divorced. He married colleague Meave Epps in 1970, and they had two daughters, Louise (born 1972) and Samira (1974).

In 1955, Richard formed the Kenya Museum Associates (now Kenya Museum Society) with influential Kenyans. Their goal was to "Kenyanise" and improve the National Museum. They offered the museum £5000, a third of its yearly budget, if it placed Leakey in a responsible position, and he became an observer on the board of directors. Joel Ojal, the government official in charge of the museum and a member of the Associates, directed the board chairman to start appointing Kenyans.

Plans for the museum were not yet mature when Louis, intentionally or not, found a way to remove his confrontational son from the scene. Louis attended a lunch with Emperor Haile Selassie and President Jomo Kenyatta. The conversation turned to fossils, and the Emperor asked why none had been found in Ethiopia. Louis turned this into permission to excavate on the Omo River. The expedition had three contingents: French, under Camille Arambourg; American, under F. Clark Howell; and Kenyan, led by Richard. Louis could not go due to arthritis. While crossing the Omo in 1967, Leakey's contingent was attacked by crocodiles, which destroyed their wooden boat. The members barely escaped. Richard radioed Louis for a new aluminum boat, which the National Geographic Society supplied. On site, Kamoya Kimeu found a hominid fossil. Leakey thought it was *Homo erectus*, but Louis identified it as *Homo sapiens*. It was the oldest of that species found at the time, dating to 160,000 years, and was the first find contemporaneous with *Homo neanderthalensis*.

Leakey went on to become a Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician. He held several official positions in Kenya, mainly in archaeology and wildlife conservation. He served as director of the National Museum of Kenya, founded the NGO WildlifeDirect, and chaired the Kenya Wildlife Service. He also held the powerful office of cabinet secretary and head of public service at the end of President Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi's government. He co-founded the Turkana Basin Institute in partnership with Stony Brook University, where he was an anthropology professor, and chaired the institute until his death on 2 January 2022.