Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey

Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey , 1903-72, British archaeologist and anthropologist of E Africa, b. Kabete, Kenya; father of Richard Leakey . His fossil discoveries in E Africa demonstrated that humans were far older than had previously been suspected. Leakey, the son of missionary parents, grew up among the Kikuyu people of Kenya. After studying at Cambridge, he began his archaeological research in E Africa in 1924. Leakey was curator of the Coryndon Museum of Nairobi (1945-61), after which he did research and taught in Africa, England, and the United States. In 1959, Mary Leakey, his wife, discovered in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, a hominid fossil ( Zinjanthropus ) believed to be 1,750,000 years old. In 1961 Leakey unearthed another fossil ( Homo habilis ) at Olduvai, which he believed to be a more direct ancestor of Homo sapiens. His writings include The Stone Age Cultures of Kenya Colony (1931), Mau Mau and the Kikuyu (1952), and Adam's Ancestors (4th ed. 1953; repr. 1960).

Bibliography: See V. Morell, Ancestral Passions: The Leakey Family and the Quest for Humankind's Beginnings (1995).

Leakey, Louis Seymour Bazett (1903–72) English palaeoanthropologist and archaeologist, who discovered fossils in East Africa that proved man to be older than previously thought. In 1931, Leakey began to research Olduvai Gorge, n Tanzania. Working with his wife Mary (1913–96), he found animal fossils and tools. Mary Leakey continued working in East Africa, often with her son Richard Leakey.

http://www.leakeyfoundation.org

Leakey, L. S. B. (1903–72) Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey was born in Kenya and spent his early years largely in company with Kikuyu children. There he acquired his lifelong interest in East African landscape and wildlife. At the age of 16 he entered school in England and, later, St John's College, Cambridge. In 1923 he joined an expedition to Tanganyika and between 1926 and 1935 he led four highly successful expeditions to East Africa, studying ancient lake levels and prehistoric cultures.

In 1937 he returned to Kenya to study the Kikuyu people, but on the outbreak of the Second World War he entered government service. In 1945 Leakey was appointed curator of the Coryndon Museum in Nairobi, making it eventually one of the finest museums on the African continent. During this time he developed with his wife, Mary, new excavation techniques for palaeontological and occupation sites. Leakey, already well versed in human and hominid palaeontology, had established the presence of forms of Ramapithecus and of Dryapithecus in the Kenyan Miocene. Now he became much sought after to advise on the study of sites elsewhere in Africa. Discoveries with Mary Leakey and others of a series of australopithecine and hominid fossils and artefacts in Olduvai Gorge established the African origin of mankind and the unique importance of the region in palaeoanthropology and human evolution.

Leakey initiated the first Pan-African Congress on Prehistory at Nairobi in 1947, and in 1962 he became the first director of the Centre for Prehistory and Palaeontology there. Its facilities have been used by many expeditions and distinguished specialists, including the Leakeys' son Richard, in continuation of Louis Leakey's research.

D. L. Dineley