biography
| name: |
Leakey, Richard (Erskine Frere)
|
pronunciation:
[leekee]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1944– )
|
| biography:
| Palaeoanthropologist, born in Nairobi, Kenya, the second son of L S B and Mary Leakey. From an early age he worked in the field with his parents, and with the archaeologist Glynn Isaac on the E shores of L Turkana (1969–75), discovering crania of Australopithecus boisei (1969), Homo habilis (1972), and Homo erectus (1975). He was appointed administrative director (1968) of the National Museum of Kenya, and director (1974). Since 1989 he has served several times as director of the Wildlife and Conservation Management Service, Kenya, and was one of the founding members of the Safina party that opposed president Daniel Arap Moi and his ruling Kenya African National Union party in the 1992 and 1997 elections. In 1999 he became head of the civil service and a member of President Moi's cabinet, he resigned in 2001. His publications include Origins (1977) and The Making of Mankind (1981), both with Roger Lewin. |
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