Henrietta Leakey

Henrietta Wilfrida "Frida" Leakey; née Avern (1902 – 19 August 1993), also known as H. Wilfrida Leakey, was a British teacher and archaeological illustrator who discovered a gorge that was named FLK or "Frida Leakey Korongo". The gorge was the site of ancient stone tools and important human fossil discoveries. Leakey was the first wife of paleoanthropologist and archaeologist, Louis Leakey. She later became a leader in the Women's Institute and a County Councillor in Cambridgeshire.

Life She was born in 1902 and her father, Henry Averne, sold cork in Reigate in Surrey. She attended the Sorbonne before going on to Newnham College, Cambridge. She then went to Kent where she worked teaching French at Benenden School in Tunbridge Wells.

She married paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey in 1928 and their first child was a daughter Priscilla Muthoni Leakey. and learnt how to construct archaeological illustrations during fieldwork. It is her illustrations that are included in "The Stone Age Cultures of Kenya Colony" published by her husband in 1931. The book describes their excavations in 1926–7 and 1928–9.

In 1931 she discovered a gorge off Olduvai Gorge that was named "FLK" for "Frida Leakey Korongo". She had suffered from severe morning sickness throughout the pregnancy and had been unable to work on the illustrations for Louis's second book, Adam's Ancestors. Louis recruited Mary Nichol to work on the illustrations and their collaboration turned into an affair. and he quickly married Mary. Frida, her son, and her daughter went to live in Cambridge.

During the Second World War she organised billeting at Girton College. She was elected chair of the Women's Institute in Cambridgeshire and she was elected as an independent county councillor for Cambridgeshire. and their diet included the hippopotamus. Excavations were still ongoing in 2019.

Works Cambridgeshire: A Chronicle of Country Women, 1918-1968. Royston: The Priory Press, 1968.