One of the world’s most well-known paleoanthropologists and conservationists, Richard Leakey made significant contributions not only to his fields of study but also to politics and research in Kenya.

Richard Leakey was born at Nairobi in Kenya, the son of the famous scholars Louis and Mary Leakey. Having left school at sixteen, he first worked as a hunter and animal collector before turning in 1964 to the search for fossil humans. His parents had spent much of their lives exploring the Rift Valley and working at Olduvai in Northern Tanzania.

In contrast Leakey undertook his first field trip to the Omo valley in Ethiopia. In 1965 he shifted his interest to Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, concentrating his work in the Koobi Fora area. At the same time he was appointed to the directorship of the Kenya National Museum, Nairobi.

In 1972 he made his first major find at Koobi Fora. This was a skull Leakey identified as Homo and took it to be Homo habilis. The age of the skull was in dispute varying from 1.8 to 2.4 million years; the former age was eventually accepted.

In 1975 a second skull was found, Homo erectus. By this time Leakey was finding that the demands of administration, producing TV series, and writing popular accounts of his work were limiting his research activities. Moreover, he suffered the onset of kidney failure in 1979. The donation of a kidney by his brother Philip restored Leakey to what he termed in his autobiography One Life (1983), the beginning of his “second life.” Much of this second life has been devoted to conservation and Leakey has been a leading figure in the fight to preserve the African elephant by banning the trade in ivory. In 1990 he was appointed director and executive chairman of the Kenyan Wildlife Service.