Louis S.B. LeakeyBorn 7 Aug 1903; died 1 Oct 1972 at age 69.Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey was an English anthropologist and archaeologist who was born in Kabete, Kenya, of English missionaries parents. Leakey was largely responsible for convincing scientists that Africa, rather than Java or China, was the most significant area to search for evidence of human origins. Leakey led fossil-hunting expeditions to eastern Africa from the 1920's. He married Mary D. Nicol in 1936 and the couple discovered many important fossils together. In 1964, on an expedition to the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, he found fossil remains of, he believed, the earliest member of the genus of human beings. He named the species Homo habilis. He died in London, and buried in the country of his birth on 4 Oct 1972. |
