Louis Leakey is justly famous as the discoverer of a number of fossils of early man at Olduvai Gorge. However the effort became a family affair very early, with his wife Mary Leakey, as well as his son Richard and Richard's wife Maeve, contributing greatly to the effort. Mary Leakey was especially successful as a paleoanthropologist and is noted for her discovery of a Proconsul skeleton, "Zinjanthropus," and the tracks of an early hominid, among others.
She was born in London as Mary Douglas Nicol in 1913. Her father Erskine Nicol was a watercolor artist and amateur Egyptologist who moved the family numerous times to locations in the United States, Italy, and Egypt, but spent considerable time in France. Mary's mother also had archeologist relatives, but Mary identified mostly with her father. Unfortunately Erskine died in 1926 and the family moved back to England, where Mary managed to get expelled from two convent schools. Her record kept her from being admitted to Oxford or any other university and so she was tutored and attended classes in archeology unofficially at University College London and the London Museum. There she studied under Mortimer Wheeler.
Her only interests being art and archeology, she soon gravitated to doing illustrations for Gurtrude Caton-Thompson, who introduced her to Louis Leakey. This resulted in a romantic liaison that ruined Leakey's academic career at Cambridge (he was married when he started living with Mary.) They were married in 1937 after his wife Frida divorced him. They were drawn to each other as like-minded people who did not easily follow rules.
From 1935-1959 the Leakey's excavated at the now famous Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. Mary had arranged to meet Louis there in 1935 and officially joined him the next year. She discovered the Proconsul skeleton in 1948 on Rusinga Island. In 1959 Mary discovered "Zinjanthropus," later called Australopithecus boisei. This discovery made the team's reputation as paleoanthropologists. They took their growing family (eventually three boys) with them on expedition and their son Richard became interested in paleoanthropology himself, as did his wife. The Leakey's discovered numerous fossils there, including those of various hominids (one important find being Homo habilis,) and added a huge amount of data to the science of paleoanthropology. Louis died in 1972, but Mary continued to work at Olduvai and, after 1976. at Laetoli, where she discovered not only more fossil remains, but a trackway of an early hominid that was dated at 3.6 million years ago.
At present the classification of early hominids is in flux and what many of the fossils will be eventually called is uncertain, but the Leakeys opened up a then nearly totally unknown world of early human history.
Mary died at the age of 83, a highly respected paleoanthropologist, who had contributed greatly in her own right to the science, as well as with her husband.
Internet References
Mary Leakey http://www.talkorigins.org/...
Mary Leakey http://www.biography.com/...
Mary Leakey http://en.wikipedia.org/...