Richard Leakey
Richard Leakey is a Kenyan anthropologist, conservationist, and political figure who was responsible for extensive fossil finds related to human evolution and who campaigned publicly for responsible management of the environment in East Africa.
The son of noted anthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey, Richard was originally reluctant to follow his parents’ career and instead became a safari guide. In 1967 he joined an expedition to the Omo River valley in Ethiopia. It was during this trip that he first noticed the site of Koobi Fora, along the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya, where he led a preliminary search that uncovered several stone tools. From this site alone in the subsequent decade, Leakey and his fellow workers uncovered some 400 hominin fossils representing perhaps 230 individuals, making Koobi Fora the site of the richest and most varied assemblage of early human remains found to date anywhere in the world.
In People of the Lake (1978), Leakey presented his view that, some 3 million years ago, three hominin forms coexisted: Homo habilis, Australopithecus africanus, and Australopithecus boisei. He argued that the two australopith forms eventually died out and that H. habilis evolved into Homo erectus the direct ancestor of Homo sapiens, or modern human beings. He claimed to have found evidence at Koobi Fora to support this theory.
Since writing the book, Leakey has since worked with a number of wildlife conservation organizations in order to connect donors with conservation efforts, and has also actively participated in the Kenyan government to promote these causes.
Roger Lewin
Roger Lewin is a British prize-winning science writer and author of 20 books.
Lewin was a staff member of New Scientist in London for nine years. He went to Washington, D.C. to write for Science for ten years as News Editor. Lewin wrote three books with Richard Leakey. He became a full-time freelance writer in 1989 and concentrated on writing books. In 1989 Roger Lewin won the Royal Society Prize for Science Books for Bones of Contention.
In 2000, Lewin formed Harvest Associates with wife, Birute Regine, for business consulting. Together they wrote, The Soul at Work: Unleashing the Power of Complexity Science for Business Success, Orion Business Books (1999), republished as Weaving Complexity & Business: Engaging the Soul at Work, Texere (2000). He is a member of the Complexity Research Group at the London School of Economics.
Sources: Britannica, Wiki