His Dad was one of my heroes when I was a kid. Of course The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau was the TV highlight of my week.
Louis and Mary Leakey were undisputed pioneers in the field of humanoid fossils. R.I.P., Richard, but it seemed to me that he was at the forefront of a number of very speculative claims about human origins. I’m by no means a serious student of physical anthropology, but 25, 30 years ago, it always seemed like Richard and his peers were digging up various human skeleton remains, naming them “australopithecus whatever” and arguing, or even feuding, without much in the way of convincing proof, about whose bones were older and which bones were in the direct human line and which weren’t. I don’t want to say he was a pseudo-scientist per se, but kinda seemed like the particular field in which he was a leader flirts with pseudo-science.
Same here! When I was a little girl in grade school and asked “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I answered “a marine biologist” so my brother would good-naturedly tease me and say I wanted to be a marine, which he thought was funny because girls couldn’t be marines back then (dating myself here).
I did not become a marine biologist, but I did get to work on an archeaologigical dig in college.
That and Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom!.............
I believe it was Mary Leakey who discovered “Lucy” while Louis was recovering from a fever.