File:Richard_Leakey_(1986).jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Richard Leakey
Sign in to saveAlso known as Richard Erskine Frere Leakey, Richard Erskine Leakey, R. E. F. Leakey, R. Leakey
kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician (1944-2022)
OverviewAI-generated
Richard Leakey (1944–2022) was an author with three children. His published works include *How the Zebra got its stripes; a collection of stories and pictures by the children of Kenya.*, *Origin of Humankind*, *Sixth Extinction 24 x Dumpbin*, *The Making of Mankind*, and *Hope*. He was recognized in the Royal Society collection and the American Academy Arts Sciences collection.
Leakey noted that he and Louis were looking for when the species *Homo* began. His writings have been referenced by 251 other encyclopedia articles.
Synthesized by Vinony from 15 facts across 7 sources: Wikidata, Last.fm, Crossref, Wikiquote, Open Library, Vinony collections, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Person · Open Library
- Works
- 10
Top works
- How the Zebra got its stripes; a collection of stories and pictures by the children of Kenya.
- Origin of Humankind
- Sixth Extinction 24 x Dumpbin
- The Making of Mankind
- Hope
via Open Library + Wikidata
Listeners · Last.fm
- Listeners
- 25
- Total plays
- 30
<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Richard+Leakey">Read more on Last.fm</a>
Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
- The Measurement of Observer Agreement for Categorical Data
· 1977 · cited 63,349x
- The Sequence Alignment/Map format and SAMtools
· 2009 · cited 59,236x
- Fast and accurate short read alignment with Burrows–Wheeler transform
· 2009 · cited 47,650x
- ImageNet: A large-scale hierarchical image database
· 2009 · cited 47,252x
- Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold
· 2021 · cited 43,586x
via Crossref · CC0
Quotes
- “I do not believe in a god who has or had a human form and to whom I owe my existence. I believe it is the man who created God in his image and not the other way round.”
- “Protecting elephants and conserving natural ecosystems remain my personal priorities. But I am not so sure this would be so were I ill, hungry, and living in dispair. ...We must somehow find a way to provide for our own species if we are also to preserve others.”
- “I'm known for speaking my mind, a trait I probably inherited from my parents, Louis and Mary Leakey—neither of whom was renowned for tact.”
- “I think both Louis and I were looking for more or less the same thing, and that is, when did our species, Homo, begin?”
- “A vital leap in the evolution of intellectual capacity would have been the ability to form concepts, to conceive of individual objects as belonging to distinct classes, and thus do away with the almost intolerable burden of relating one experience to another. Concepts, moreover, can be manipulated and this is the root of abstract thought and of invention. The formation of concepts is also a necessary, but apparently not sufficient, condition for the emergence of language.”
- “Ever since Darwin tied knots between human beings and the rest of the animal world, many people have frantically attempted to untie them again, declaring that even though our roots are in the animal world we have left them so far behind as to make any comparisons utterly meaningless. To some extent this is true, because the quality that makes us unique in the biological kingdom is the enormous capacity to learn.”
via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA
Key facts
- Born
- Richard Erskine Frere Leakey , ( 1944-12-19 ) 19 December 1944, Nairobi , British Kenya
- Died
- 2 January 2022 (2022-01-02) (aged 77), Nairobi, Kenya
- Spouses
- Margaret Cropper ( married</span>"}]]}'>m. 1965 ; divorced</span>"}]]}'>div. 1969 ) Meave Epps , ( married</span>"}]]}'>m. 1970 )
- Children
- 3, including Louise
- Parents
- Louis Leakey Mary Douglas Leakey (née Nicol)
- Awards
- Hubbard Medal (1994)
- Fields
- Paleoanthropology Conservation
- Institutions
- Stony Brook University
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- Kenya
- Place of birth
- Nairobi
- Place of death
- Nairobi
- Spouse
- Meave Leakey
- Child
- Louise Leakey
- Father
- Louis Leakey
- Mother
- Mary Leakey
- Occupation
- anthropologist
- Employer
- Stony Brook University
- Languages spoken
- Swahili
- Religion
- atheism
- Field of work
- natural monument
- Movement
- humanism
- Image
- Richard Leakey (1986).jpg
- Number of children
- 3
Show 9 more facts
- Commons category
- Richard Leakey
- date of birth
- 1944-12-19
- member of
- African Academy of Sciences
- name in native language
- Richard Leakey
- date of death
- 2022-01-02
- birth name
- Richard Erskine Frere Leakey
- ethnic group
- English people
- place of burial
- Ngong Hills
- on focus list of Wikimedia project
- Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
Sources (9)
via Wikidata · CC0
~17 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Richard Erskine Frere Leakey (19 December 1944 – 2 January 2022) was a Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist and politician. Leakey held a number of official positions in Kenya, mostly in institutions of archaeology and wildlife conservation. He was director of the National Museum of Kenya, founded the NGO WildlifeDirect, and was the chairman of the Kenya Wildlife Service. Leakey served in the powerful office of cabinet secretary and head of public service during the tail end of President Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi's government.
Leakey co-founded the "Turkana Basin Institute" in an academic partnership with Stony Brook University, where he was an anthropology professor. He served as the chair of the Turkana Basin Institute until his death.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Richard Leakey” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.