Leakey, Louis Seymour Bazett (1903-1972), was a British anthropologist who convinced scientists that Africa was the most important place to search for evidence of the earliest human beings. Scientists had previously centered their searches in Asia because of fossils discovered in China and Java (now part of Indonesia).
Leakey led fossil-hunting expeditions in eastern Africa during the 1920’s. He married Mary D. Nicol in 1936, and she joined in his work. The couple discovered fossils of apelike animals that lived between 14 million and 20 million years ago in what is now Kenya. In the early 1960’s, a Leakey expedition to the Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, uncovered human fossils. Leakey and other scientists named the discovery Homo habilis, a fossil group now considered by most anthropologists to be the remains of one of the earliest types of human beings. Homo habilis lived in Africa about 2 million years ago.
Leakey was born on Aug. 7, 1903, in Kabete, Kenya, near Nairobi. His parents were British missionaries. He died on Oct. 1, 1972.
