Richard Leakey

As a small boy, Leakey lived in Nairobi with his parents, Louis Leakey, curator of the Coryndon Museum, and Mary Leakey, director of the Leakey excavations at Olduvai, and his two brothers, Jonathan and Philip.[2] The Leakey brothers had a very active childhood. All the boys had ponies and belonged to the Langata Pony Club. They participated in jumping and steeplechase competitions but often rode for fun across the plains to the Ngong Hills, chasing and playing games with the animals. Sometimes the whole club were guests at the Leakeys' for holidays and vacations. Leakey's parents founded the Dalmatian Club of East Africa and won a prize in 1957. Dogs and many other pets shared the Leakey home. The Leakey boys participated in games conducted by both adults and children, in which they tried to imitate early humans, catching springhares and small antelope by hand on the Serengeti. They drove lions and jackals from the kill to see if they could do it.[3]

In 1956, at age 11, Leakey fell from his horse, fracturing his skull and lying near death. Incidentally, it was this incident that saved his parents' marriage. Louis was seriously considering leaving Mary for his secretary, Rosalie Osborn. As the battle with Mary raged in the household, Leakey begged his father from his sickbed not to leave. That was the deciding factor. Louis broke up with Rosalie and the family lived in happy harmony for a few years more.[4]

Leakey chose to support himself, borrowed 500 pounds from his parents for a Land Rover and went into the trapping and skeleton supply business with Kamoya Kimeu. Already a skilled horseman, outdoorsman, Land Rover mechanic, amateur archaeologist, and expedition leader, he learned to identify bones, skills which all pointed to a path he did not yet wish to take, simply because his father was on it.[5]

The bone business turned into a safari business in 1961. In 1962 he obtained a private aeroplane pilot license and took tours to Olduvai. It was from a casual aerial survey that he noted the potential of Lake Natron's shores for palaeontology. He went looking for fossils in a Land Rover, but could find none, until his parents assigned Glynn Isaac to go with him. Louis was so impressed with their finds that he gave them National Geographic money for a month's expedition.[6] They explored in the vicinity of Peninj near the lake, where Leakey was in charge of the 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 that he was being excluded from the most significant part of the operation, the scientific analysis.

In 1964 on his second Lake Natron expedition, Leakey met an archaeologist named Margaret Cropper. When Margaret returned to England, Leakey decided to follow suit to study for a degree and become better acquainted with her. He completed his high school requirements in six months; meanwhile Margaret obtained her degree at the University of Edinburgh. He passed the entrance exams for admission to college, but in 1965 he and Margaret decided to get married and return to Kenya. His father offered him a job at Centre for Prehistory and Palaeontology. He worked for it, excavating at Lake Baringo and continued his photographic safari business, making enough money to buy a house in Karen, a pleasant suburb of Nairobi. Their daughter Anna was born in 1969, the same year that Leakey and Margaret divorced. He married his colleague Meave Epps in 1970 and they had two daughters, Louise (born 1972) and Samira (1974).[7]

Plans for the museum had not matured 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 wanted to know why none had been found in Ethiopia. Louis developed this inquiry into permission to excavate on the Omo River.

The expedition consisted of three contingents: French, under Camille Arambourg, American, under Clark Howell, and Kenyan, led by Leakey. Louis could not go because of his arthritis. Crossing the Omo in 1967, Leakey's contingent was attacked by crocodiles, which destroyed their wooden boat. Expedition members barely escaped with their lives. Leakey radioed Louis for a new, aluminium boat, which the National Geographic Society was happy to supply.

On site, Kamoya Kimeu found a hominid fossil. Leakey took it to be Homo erectus, but Louis identified it as Homo sapiens. It was the oldest of the species found at that time, dating to 160,000 years, and was the first find contemporaneous with Homo neanderthalensis. During the identification process, Leakey came to feel that the college men were patronising him.[8]

During the Omo expedition of 1967, Leakey visited Nairobi and on the return flight the pilot flew over Lake Rudolph (renamed Lake Turkana from 1975) to avoid a thunderstorm. The map led Leakey to expect volcanic rock below him but he saw sediments. Visiting the region with Howell by helicopter, he saw tools and fossils everywhere. In his mind, he started formulating a new enterprise.

In 1968 Louis and Leakey attended a meeting of the Research and Exploration Committee of the National Geographic Society to ask for money for Omo. Catching Louis by surprise, Leakey asked the committee to divert the $25,000 intended for Omo to new excavations to be conducted under his leadership at Koobi Fora. Leakey won, but chairman Leonard Carmichael told him he'd better find something or never "come begging at our door again". Louis graciously congratulated Leakey.

By then the board of the National Museum was packed with Kenyan supporters of Leakey. They appointed him administrative director. The curator, Robert Carcasson, resigned in protest, and Leakey was left with the museum at his command, which he, like Louis before him, used as a base of operations.[9] Although there was friendly rivalry and contention between Louis and Leakey, relations remained good. Each took over for the other when one was busy with something else or incapacitated, and Leakey continued to inform his father immediately of hominid finds.

In the first expedition to Allia Bay on Lake Turkana, where the Koobi Fora camp came to be located, Leakey hired only graduate students in anthropology, as he did not want any questioning of his leadership. The students were John Harris and Bernard Wood. Also present was a team of Africans under Kamoya: a geochemist, Paul Abel, and a photographer, Bob Campbell. Margaret was the archaeologist. Leakey took to smoking a pipe to enhance his status, as did Kamoya. There were no leadership problems. In contrast to his father, Leakey ran a disciplined and tidy camp, although, in order to find fossils, he did push the expedition harder than it wished.

In 1969 the discovery of a cranium of Paranthropus boisei caused great excitement. A Homo rudolfensis skull (KNM ER 1470) and a Homo erectus skull (KNM ER 3733), discovered in 1972 and 1975, respectively, were among the most significant finds of Leakey's earlier expeditions. In 1978 an intact cranium of Homo erectus (KNM ER 3883) was discovered.

Leakey was diagnosed with a terminal kidney disease in 1969. Ten years later he became seriously ill but received a kidney transplant from his brother, Philip, and recovered to full health.[7]

Leakey and Donald Johanson were at the time considered the most famous palaeoanthropologists, and scientifically their views on human evolution were differing - a scientific rivalry that gained public attention. This culminated at the Cronkite's Universe talk-show hosted by Walter Cronkite in New York in 1981, where Leakey and Johanson held a fierce debate on live TV-show.[10]

Turkana Boy – steps of forensic facial reconstruction/approximation

Turkana Boy, discovered by Kamoya Kimeu, a member of the Leakeys' team, in 1984, was the nearly complete skeleton of a Homo ergaster (though some, including Leakey, call it erectus) who died 1.6 million years ago at about age 9–12. Leakey and Roger Lewin describe the experience of this find and their interpretation of it, in their book Origins Reconsidered (1992). Shortly after the discovery of Turkana Boy, Leakey and his team made the discovery of a skull (KNM WT 17000, known as "Black Skull") of a new species, Australopithecus aethiopicus (or Paranthropus aethiopicus).

Richard shifted away from palaeontology in 1989, but his wife Meave Leakey and daughter Louise Leakey continue to conduct palaeontological research in Northern Kenya.

In 1993, a small propeller-driven plane piloted by Richard Leakey crashed, crushing his lower legs, both of which were later amputated. Sabotage was suspected but never proved.[14] While in the hospital, Leakey told President Moi, a religious man, not to pray for him, but act on matters pending for the Kenya Wildlife Service.[15] Since then, Richard Leakey has walked on artificial limbs.[16] Around this time the Kenyan government announced that a secret probe had found evidence of corruption and mismanagement in the Kenya Wildlife Service. An annoyed Leakey resigned publicly in a press conference in January 1994. He was replaced by David Western as the head of the Kenya Wildlife Service.

Richard Leakey wrote about his experiences at the Kenya Wildlife Service in his book Wildlife Wars: My Fight to Save Africa's Natural Treasures (2001).