Richard Erskine Frere Leakey

Richard Erskine Frere Leakey was born in Nairobi, British Kenya, the son of renowned prehistorians Louis and Mary Leakey. Initially resisting his family's profession, he worked as a safari guide and bone collector before leading his own expeditions to Lake Turkana in northern Kenya in the late 1960s.

Leakey made monumental fossil discoveries that transformed human evolutionary science: Homo habilis skull KNM-ER 1470 in 1972, and in 1984, working with Kamoya Kimeu, the miraculous discovery of "Turkana Boy" (Homo erectus)—the most complete early human skeleton ever found. In 1989, President Daniel arap Moi appointed Leakey head of the Wildlife Conservation and Management Department (now Kenya Wildlife Service). Leakey created armed anti-poaching ranger units with shoot-to-kill authorization and organized the dramatic 1989 public burning of twelve tons of confiscated elephant tusks in Nairobi, collapsing the international ivory market. Surviving a 1993 plane crash that cost him both legs below the knee, he founded the Safina political party and served as Head of the Public Service.