Bancroftiana, Number 123 Fall 2003: Louis B. Leakey Interviews

Louis B. Leakey

Louis B. Leakey Interviews

Louis Leakey was born 100 years ago this fall, and to mark the centennial, the Regional Oral History Office has joined with the Leakey Foundation, based in San Francisco, and National Geographic science writer, Virginia Morrell, to interview important paleoanthropologists and ape behavior scientists who knew and worked with Louis Leakey and his wife, Mary, during his life.

The group of 16 international scientific luminaries includes Jane Goodall, Louis’s son Richard Leakey, Kimoya Kimeu, Phillip Tobias, Irv Devore, and UC Berkeley’s Garnis Curtis, the geochronologist who dated the Leakeys’ hominid fossils with a new technique that pushed back the origins of humankind from 600,000 to 1.75 million years. Interviewer, Virginia Morell, is the author of Ancestral Passions, a biography of the Leakey family which was recognized by the New York Times as one of 1995’s notable books.

The Leakey Foundation sponsored this series of interviews to coincide with a celebration of Louis Leakey’s centenary celebration, October 10-11, 2003, which will take place in collaboration with The Field Museum of Chicago. This exceptional gathering of paleoanthropology’s leading scientists will trace the trajectory of the Leakey legacy up to the present day. A pioneer in the new science of ancient hominid fossils, Louis Leakey was an often controversial figure. However, he set in motion the study of early hominid fossils, asserted that the human species came out of Africa, and encouraged the study of apes which has yielded much information about the differences and similarities between homo sapiens and their closest living relatives.

The recorded interviews have taken place from Europe to South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania, as well as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Arizona, and Massachusetts. Many stories and insights have already been collected.

Virginia Morrell explains one interview: “Mary Smith was Louis and Mary Leakey’s editor at National Geographic Magazine. She recounts how Louis always brought some bit of fossil or stone tool (usually a cast) to his annual meetings with the magazine and the National Geographic Society’s research committee. ‘He always had one tucked away in his pocket. And at some point during the meeting, he’d pull it out, wrapped in a dirty handkerchief.’ She recalled how he would pass it around the room like a kid with a new toy, all the while telling the committee members how this new broken bit of bone was going to ‘overturn everyone’s ideas’ about human origins. ‘He loved doing that and it never worried him that he might be wrong or that what he said in the past was wrong. And he’d dismiss with a wave of his hand anyone who raised any objections or concerns.’ Others have mentioned this about him as well, and I think it’s one of Louis’s attributes that made him so important to the field. He was never held back by his old ideas, always ready to embrace something new, and did not worry that others would criticize him for this.”

Louis B. Leakey

David Pilbeam made an important observation:“David suggested that Louis was ‘probably the first paleoanthropologist’ —the first scientist to embody all of the fields of research (anthropology, archaeology, geology, primatology, animal behavior, evolutionary biology, etc.) that are now key to the study of human origins. These are all separate fields, but a paleoanthropologist needs to be familiar with aspects of all of them—or needs to be able to bring together a team of scientists encompassing these disparate subjects.”

Morell’s inteviews will be available to the public through the Regional Oral History Office at the University of California at Berkeley in 2004.

—Camilla Smith