Louise Leakey

Princess Louise de Merode (née Leakey, born 21 March 1972) is a Kenyan paleontologist and anthropologist. She conducts research and field work on human fossils in Eastern Africa.

Early life and education Louise Leakey was born in Nairobi, Kenya, to Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist and politician Richard Leakey and British paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey in 1972, the same year that her paleoanthropologist grandfather, Louis Leakey, died. She first became actively involved in fossil discoveries in 1977, when at the age of five she became the youngest documented person to find a hominoid fossil.

Leakey earned her International Baccalaureate from United World College of the Atlantic and a Bachelor of Science degree in geology and biology from the University of Bristol. She earned a PhD from University College, London in 2001.

Career In 1993, Leakey joined her mother as a co-leader of paleontological expeditions in northern Kenya. The Koobi Fora research project has been the main program behind some of the most notable hominid fossil discoveries of the past two decades, the most recent being Kenyanthropus platyops.

Personal life In 2003, Leakey married Prince Emmanuel de Merode, a Belgian primatologist. She is styled princesse de Merode by marriage. The couple have two daughters.