Richard Leakey | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Leakey in 1986 | |
| Born | Richard Erskine Frere Leakey (1944-12-19)19 December 1944 |
| Died | 2 January 2022(2022-01-02) (aged 77) Nairobi,Kenya |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 3, includingLouise |
| Parents | |
| Awards | Hubbard Medal (1994) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | |
| Institutions | Stony Brook University |
Richard Erskine Frere LeakeyFRS[1] (19 December 1944 – 2 January 2022) was a Kenyanpaleoanthropologist,conservationist and politician.[2] Leakey held a number of official positions in Kenya, mostly in institutions ofarchaeology andwildlife conservation. He was director of theNational Museum of Kenya,[2] founded the NGOWildlifeDirect, and was the chairman of theKenya Wildlife Service.[3] Leakey served in the powerful office of cabinet secretary and head of public service during the tail end of PresidentDaniel Toroitich Arap Moi's government.
Leakey co-founded the "Turkana Basin Institute" in an academic partnership withStony Brook University, where he was an anthropology professor. He served as the chair of the Turkana Basin Institute until his death.[4][5]
Richard Erskine Frere Leakey was born on 19 December 1944 inNairobi.[6] As a small boy, Leakey lived in Nairobi with his parents:Louis Leakey, curator of the Coryndon Museum, andMary Leakey, director of the Leakey excavations atOlduvai, and his two brothers, Jonathan andPhilip.[7] The Leakey brothers had a very active childhood. All the boys had ponies and belonged to the Langata Pony Club.[8] 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.[9] Dogs and many other pets shared the Leakey home.[9] The Leakey boys participated in games conducted by both adults and children, in which they tried to imitate early humans, catchingspringhare and small antelope by hand on theSerengeti. They drove lions andjackals from the kill to see if they could do it.[10]
In 1956, aged eleven, Leakey fell from his horse, fracturing his skull and nearly dying as a result.[11] Incidentally, it was this incident that saved his parents' marriage.[11] 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.[12]
Leakey chose to support himself, borrowed £500 from his parents for aLand Rover and went into the trapping and skeleton supply business withKamoya Kimeu.[13] Already a skilled horseman, outdoorsman, Land Rover mechanic, amateur archaeologist, and expedition leader,[14] 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.[15]
The bone business turned into a safari business in 1961.[16] In 1962, he obtained a private pilot licence and took tours to theOlduvai Gorge.[17] It was from a casual aerial survey that he noted the potential ofLake Natron's shores for palaeontology. He went looking for fossils in a Land Rover, but could find none, until his parents assignedGlynn Isaac to go with him.[18] Louis was so impressed with their finds that he gave themNational Geographic money for a month's expedition.[19] 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 ofAustralopithecus boisei.[13] A second expedition left Leakey feeling that he was being excluded from the most significant part of the operation, the scientific analysis.[13]
In 1964, on his second Lake Natron expedition, Leakey met an archaeologist named Margaret Cropper.[20] 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 theUniversity of Edinburgh.[21] He passed the entrance exams for admission to college, but in 1965 he and Margaret decided to marry and return to Kenya. His father offered him a job at the Centre for Prehistory and Palaeontology.[22] He worked excavating atLake Baringo and continued his photographic safari business, making enough money to buy a house inKaren, a pleasant suburb of Nairobi.[23] Their daughter Anna was born in 1969, the same year that Leakey and Margaret divorced. He married his colleagueMeave Epps in 1970 and they had two daughters,Louise (born 1972) and Samira (1974).[24]
Richard formed the Kenya Museum Associates (now Kenya Museum Society) with influential Kenyans in 1955.[25] They aimed to "Kenyanise" and improve theNational Museum.[25] They offered the museum £5000, one-third of its yearly budget, if it would place Leakey in a responsible position, and he became an observer on the board of directors.[26] Joel Ojal, the government official in charge of the museum, and a member of the Associates, directed the chairman of the board to start placing Kenyans on it.[27]
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 withEmperorHaile Selassie andPresidentJomo Kenyatta.[28] The conversation turned to fossils, and the Emperor wanted to know why none had been found inEthiopia. Louis developed this inquiry into permission to excavate on theOmo River.[28]
The expedition consisted of three contingents: French, underCamille Arambourg, American, underF. Clark Howell, and Kenyan, led by Richard.[29] Louis could not go because of his arthritis. Crossing the Omo in 1967, Leakey's contingent was attacked bycrocodiles, which destroyed their wooden boat.[14] Expedition members barely escaped with their lives. Richard radioed Louis for a new, aluminium boat, which theNational Geographic Society was happy to supply.[14]
On site, Kamoya Kimeu found a hominid fossil. Leakey took it to beHomo erectus, but Louis identified it asHomo sapiens.[30] It was the oldest of the species found at that time, dating to 160,000 years, and was the first find contemporaneous withHomo neanderthalensis. During the identification process, Leakey came to feel that the college men were patronising him.[31]
During the Omo expedition of 1967, Leakey visited Nairobi and on the return flight the pilot flew overLake Rudolph (renamed Lake Turkana from 1975) to avoid a thunderstorm.[32] 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.[32]
In 1968 Louis and Richard attended a meeting of the Research and Exploration Committee of the National Geographic Society to ask for money for Omo.[33] Catching Louis by surprise, Richard asked the committee to divert the $25,000 intended for Omo to new excavations to be conducted under his leadership at Koobi Fora. Richard won, but chairmanLeonard Carmichael told him he'd better find something or never "come begging at our door again".[33] Louis graciously congratulated Richard.[33]
By that time the board of theNational Museum was packed with Kenyan supporters of Richard. They appointed him administrative director.[34] The curator, Robert Carcasson, resigned in protest,[33] and Leakey was left with the museum at his command, which he, like Louis before him, used as a base of operations.[35] Although there was friendly rivalry and contention between Louis and Richard, relations remained good. Each took over for the other when one was busy with something else or incapacitated, and Richard continued to inform his father immediately of hominid finds.[33]
In the first expedition to Allia Bay on Lake Turkana, where the Koobi Fora camp came to be located, Leakey hired primarily young researchers. The students included John Harris and Bernard Wood.[36] Also present was a team of Africans under Kamoya: a geochemist, Paul Abel, and a photographer,Bob Campbell.[37] Margaret was the archaeologist. In contrast to his father, Richard ran a disciplined and tidy camp, although, in order to find fossils, he did push the expedition harder than it wished.[38]
In 1969 the discovery of a cranium ofParanthropus boisei caused great excitement.[39] AHomo rudolfensis skull (KNM ER 1470) and aHomo erectus skull (KNM ER 3733), discovered in 1972 and 1975, respectively, were among the most significant finds of Leakey's earlier expeditions.[40] In 1978 an intact cranium ofHomo erectus (KNM ER 3883) was discovered.[38]
Donald Johanson and Leakey held different views about human evolution. They held a debate onCronkite's Universe, a talk show hosted byWalter Cronkite, in 1981.[41]
Turkana Boy, discovered byKamoya Kimeu, a member of the Leakeys' team, in 1984, was the nearly complete skeleton of aHomo ergaster (though some, including Leakey, call iterectus) who died 1.6 million years ago at about age 9–12.[42] Leakey andRoger Lewin describe the experience of this find and their interpretation of it, in their bookOrigins Reconsidered (1992).[43] 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 (orParanthropus aethiopicus).[44]
Richard shifted away from palaeontology in 1989, but his wifeMeave Leakey and daughterLouise Leakey continue to conduct palaeontological research in Northern Kenya.[45][46]
In 1989 Richard Leakey was appointed the head of the Wildlife Conservation and Management Department (WMCD) by PresidentDaniel Arap Moi in response to the international outcry over thepoaching of elephants and the impact it was having on the wildlife of Kenya.[47] The department was replaced by theKenya Wildlife Service (KWS) in 1990, and Leakey became its first chairman.[48] With characteristically bold steps Leakey created special, well-armed anti-poaching units that were authorised to shoot poachers on sight.[49] The poaching menace was dramatically reduced. Impressed by Leakey's transformation of the Kenya Wildlife Service, theWorld Bank approved grants worth $140 million.[50] Richard Leakey, President Moi, and the WMCD made the international news headlines when a stockpile of 12 tons ofivory wasburned in 1989 inNairobi National Park.[51]
| External videos | |
|---|---|
 Presentation by Leakey to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., "New Wildlife Policy for Kenya", April 18, 1991,C-SPAN |
Richard Leakey's confrontational approach to the issue of human–wildlife conflict innational parks did not win him friends. His view was that parks were self-contained ecosystems that had to be fenced in and the humans kept out. Leakey's bold and incorruptible nature also offended many local politicians.[52]
In 2016, Leakey was named Conservationist of the Year byThe Perfect World Foundation and won "The Fragile Rhino" prize at the Elephant Ball inGothenburg, Sweden.[53][54]
In 1993, a small propeller-driven plane piloted by Richard Leakey crashed, crushing his lower legs, both of which were later amputated.[11] Sabotage was suspected but never proven.[55] 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.[56] Thereafter, Richard Leakey walked onartificial limbs.[57] 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.[58] He was replaced by David Western as the head of the Kenya Wildlife Service.[59]
Richard Leakey wrote about his experiences at the Kenya Wildlife Service in his bookWildlife Wars: My Fight to Save Africa's Natural Treasures (2001).[60]
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In May 1995, Richard Leakey joined some Kenyan intellectuals in launching a new political party – theSafina Party,[61] which in Swahili means "Noah's Ark".[61] The Safina party was routinely harassed and even its application to become an official political party was not approved until 1997.[62]
| External videos | |
|---|---|
| Presentation by Leakey to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., "Origins and Politics", October 6, 1995,C-SPAN |
In 1997, international donor institutions froze their aid to Kenya because of widespread corruption.[63] To placate the donors, Moi appointed Richard Leakey as Cabinet Secretary and head of the civil service in 1999. Leakey's second stint in the civil service lasted two years.[64] He sacked 25,000 civil servants and obtained £250 million of funds from theInternational Monetary Fund and theWorld Bank.[65] However, Leakey found himself sidelined after the money arrived, and his reforms were blocked in the courts. He was sacked from his cabinet post in 2001.[57]
Leakey left Kenya for the U.S. in 2002 and became a professor of anthropology atStony Brook University, New York.[66] He was also Chair of the Turkana Basin Institute.[67] In 2004, Leakey founded and chairedWildlifeDirect, a Kenya-based charitable organisation.[68] The charity was established to provide support to conservationists in Africa directly on the ground via the use of blogs. This enables individuals anywhere to play a direct and interactive role in the survival of some of the world's most precious species. The organisation played a significant role in the saving of theDemocratic Republic of Congo'smountain gorillas inVirunga National Park in January 2007 after a rebel uprising threatened to eliminate the highly vulnerable population.[11]
In April 2007, he was appointed interim chairman ofTransparency International's Kenya branch.[42] The same year, Leakey was elected aFellow of the Royal Society[69] and received theGolden Plate Award of theAmerican Academy of Achievement.[70] In June 2013, Leakey was awarded theIsaac Asimov Science Award from theAmerican Humanist Association.[71]
Leakey's groundbreaking work contributed to the recognition of Africa as the birthplace of humankind, that contributed as evidence that the earliest humans had lived on the African continent. He was known to have spearheaded campaigns to stop poaching in Kenya.[72] Aside from his contributions to public service, he was known to have contributed immensely to the civil service; "Besides his distinguished career in public service, Dr Leakey is celebrated for his prominent role in Kenya's civil society where he founded and successfully ran a number of institutions," Mr Kenyatta said.[72]
In 2015, PresidentUhuru Kenyatta appointed Leakey chairman of the board of the Kenya Wildlife Service. Although he was chairman rather than director, Leakey played an active role in KWS policies.[57] He brokered a deal on the extension of theMombasa–Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway, allowing the railway to pass overNairobi National Park on an 18 m tallviaduct.[73] Leakey felt that the viaduct would set an example for the rest of Africa in balancing economic development with environmental protection. However, other Kenyan conservationists have opposed railway construction in the park.[74]
Angelina Jolie was to direct a film about Leakey's life, with Leakey in early 2016 expressing his confidence that the film would be shot in Kenya.[75]
Leakey spoke fluent Kiswahili and moved effortlessly between white and black communities. While he rarely talked about race in public, racism and gender inequality infuriated him.[76] Leakey stated that he was anatheist[77] and ahumanist.[56]
Leakey came from a family of renowned archeologists. His mother, Mary Leakey, discovered evidence in 1978 that man walked upright much earlier than had been thought. She and her husband, Louis Leakey, unearthed skulls of ape-like early humans, shedding fresh light on our ancestors.[78]
Leakey was diagnosed with a terminalkidney disease in 1969. Ten years later he became seriously ill but received akidney transplant from his brother, Philip, and recovered to full health.[79]
He died at his home outside Nairobi, on 2 January 2022,[80] less than a month after his 77th birthday.[81][82][83] In accordance with his wishes, he was buried on a hill along the Rift Valley.[84]
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Leakey's early published works includeOrigins andThe People of the Lake (both with Roger Lewin as co-author),The Illustrated Origin of Species, andThe Making of Mankind (1981).
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
