Louis Leakey

Louis Leakey (1903-1972) was an important Kenyan anthropologist responsible for significant East African research on human evolution. Louis was the son of British missionaries who worked in Kenya. He was born in the town of Kabete and grew up immersed in the cultre of the Kikuyu people with whom his parents were working. As a result Leakey was fluent in Kikuyu and considered himself more Kikuyu than English. Having spent much of his childhood in Kabete, in 1919 the 16-year-old Leakey travelled to England where he attended Weymouth College and later studied modern language at the University of Cambridge. In 1928 he married Henrietta Wilfrida, but the couple divorced eight years later. On Christmas Eve 1936 Leakey married Mary Douglas Nicol who would later became a renowned archaeologist. Louis and Mary had four children.