Louis and Mary Leakey
Louis Leakey’s real name was Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey. He was born on August 7th 1903 in Kabete, Kenya and died on October 1st 1972 from heart failure in London, England. He grew up in Africa but in 1922 he entered Cambridge University intent on learning. He was injured in rugby and was forced to postpone his studies. He returned to Africa for some time and took up management of the paleontological expedition. But he returned to Cambridge in 1925, resumed his formal studies, and by 1926 had graduated with degrees in both archaeology and anthropology. Louis had married Frida Avern in 1928 and they had children together and in 1933, while Frida was pregnant with their second child, Louis was introduced to a young illustrator, Mary Nicol. Louis had and affair with Mary, which ended his marriage to Frida in 1936.
Louis and Mary were still making pilgrimages to Olduvai and nearby parts of Tanzania to collect fossils and stone tools and make observations of local wildlife and geology. In 1948 Mary made an encouraging discovery: the fossilized teeth, jaws and half skull of an ancient ape ancestor, Proconsul africanus. Although not quite the missing link they were hoping for, it did at least hint that they were probably on the right trail. But it was another decade before they found what they had really been hoping for: a genuine early non-ape, proto-human, that appeared to belong somewhere in humanity's ancient lineage. Louis tentatively dated the fossil at 600,000 years old. But later testing, back in England proved it to be in fact three to four times that old. The Leakey’s were elated, and the National Geographic Society was considerably excited as well.