On October 6, 1948, paleontologist Mary Leakey discovered an 18 million year old partial skull fossil in Kenya. Along with Leakey’s later finds, this discovery helped usher in an era of better understanding human evolution. At a time when female scientists were still a rarity, Leakey carved out a space for women in paleontology while solving many mysteries about the earliest humans.
Born Mary Douglas Nichol in London, England in 1913, she was exposed to drawing and nature as a child, thanks to her frequent family trips to southern France where her artist father painted landscapes. She demonstrated artistic talent at a young age and was inspired watching archaeologists work in the prehistoric cave sites.
At the age of 17, she was already well enough known in the archaeological world for her Stone Age artifact illustrations to be hired for an important archeological dig in England and others. Soon after, Mary met the famous paleontologist, archaeologist and anthropologist Louis Leakey, when she was hired to illustrate one of his books, “Adam’s Ancestors.” They fell in love and married four years later in 1937. After exchanging nuptials, Mary and Louis moved to Africa to begin their lifetime together hunting for fossils.
Although the archaeological power couple worked closely together, Mary made some important discoveries by herself. In addition to her 1948 discovery, she also unearthed the partial skull of a human ancestor in 1959 that secured the couple permanent funding for their research from the National Geographic Society.
After her husband died in 1972, Mary continued her search for fossils. In 1979, she found a trail of early human footprints in Tanzania. This discovery was groundbreaking as it proved that early humans walked upright far earlier than was previously believed. About her 1979 discovery, Leakey concluded that “somewhat oversimplified, the formula holds that this new freedom of forelimbs posed a challenge. The brain expanded to meet it. And mankind was formed.”
Mary died on December 9, 1996 in Nairobi, Kenya, but her legacy lives on through the work of her children and the Leakey Foundation… and all the young women inspired by her to pursue STEM careers previous only relegated to men.