Richard Erskine Frere Leakey (19 December 1944 – 2 January 2022) was a Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist and politician. Leakey held a number of official positions in Kenya, mostly in institutions of archaeology and wildlife conservation. He was director of the National Museum of Kenya, founded the NGO WildlifeDirect, and was the chairman of the Kenya Wildlife Service. Leakey served in the powerful office of cabinet secretary and head of public service during the tail end of President Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi's government. Leakey co-founded the "Turkana Basin Institute" in an academic partnership with Stony Brook University, where he was an anthropology professor. He served as the chair of the Turkana Basin Institute until his death.
Early life
Earliest years Richard Erskine Frere Leakey was born on 19 December 1944 in Nairobi. 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. The Leakey brothers had a very active childhood. All the boys had ponies and belonged to the Langata Pony Club. 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 springhare and small antelope by hand on the Serengeti. They drove lions and jackals from the kill to see if they could do it.
Fractured skull In 1956, aged eleven, Leakey fell from his horse, fracturing his skull and nearly dying as a result. 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.
Teenage entrepreneur Leakey chose to support himself, borrowed £500 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. The bone business turned into a safari business in 1961. In 1962, he obtained a private pilot licence and took tours to the Olduvai Gorge. 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. 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.
Marriage 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 marry and return to Kenya. His father offered him a job at the Centre for Prehistory and Palaeontology. He worked 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).
Palaeontology Richard formed the Kenya Museum Associates (now Kenya Museum Society) with influential Kenyans in 1955. They aimed to "Kenyanise" and improve the National Museum. 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. 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.
The Omo 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 F. Clark Howell, and Kenyan, led by Richard. 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. Richard 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.
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