Meave Leakey Interview (page: 5 / 7) Pioneering Paleoanthropologist	Print Interview

What kind of student were you? What kind of school did you go to?

Meave Leakey: Initially I went to a convent as a day care, and then eventually my parents sent me to a girls' boarding school. It was a good school, but they didn't teach girls science. In those days, girls didn't really need to learn science it was thought. I don't think my parents realized this. When I finally took my A levels, they started saying, "What do you want to do before you take your A levels?"

How old are you when you take your A levels?

Meave Leakey: It's 16 or 17. And then, in the English system, you do another two years, and then you're qualified to go to university. So you chose your A levels depending on what subjects you wanted to do at university, depending on what career you wanted to choose. So you are really in a way having to choose whether you do science or arts at 16 and 17. I definitely knew I wanted to do science. There was no question. Because we hadn't done science at school, there was no way that I could qualify to go to university so I had to go to a technical college and do science O levels and then science A levels. Then I was qualified to go to university. So I had to sort of redo all that.

That was a long time to be in school.

Meave Leakey: It was. It was a technical college near our home. I sort of crammed it anyway.

In some medical schools there are more women than men nowadays. When you look back, it was really just a generation ago that women were not regarded as potential scientists.

Meave Leakey: Things have really changed, and dramatically changed I think. It's really encouraging now when I'm talking to students, in America particularly, that the student body is often more girls than men, young women than men. And it is, as you say, it's very quick. It's happened really quickly. I really wanted to do marine zoology, so I chose my university because there was a very good marine station there. I never dreamt I would be anything but a marine zoologist. It was straightforward as far as I could see. I went to a good school, got a good degree, and there you go. But when I started to apply for jobs, the answer was always negative, because I was a woman and they didn't have facilities (for women) on boats for men. You really can't do oceanography and marine zoology without going to sea. So it was just "No, no, no." Which is how I finally got into going to Africa and doing paleontology.
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Was there any teacher who believed in you and encouraged you and stands out in your memory?

Meave Leakey: At university definitely, because I was the only student doing an honors degree who was doing marine zoology. So there were people there who really encouraged me. I was very fortunate, because I was able to join the M.Sc. (Master of Science) course and attend all their lectures, which was just great.

I was with the Master's students, although I was just doing a regular honors degree. So I was getting more information than I would have got if I had been with another club. But in the zoology, we had an excellent functional zoologist who did the evolution course. Looking back on it that was actually -- I was very focused on the marine, but that evolution course was really one I enjoyed enormously. He was an excellent lecturer, and he was very, very succinct in what he said, so it was always very clear and very easy to understand, and always made so much sense. I really enjoyed his course a lot and he was very enthusiastic and very encouraging.
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What was his name?

Meave Leakey: Lew Alexander. He has gone on to do a lot of functional work.

What would you have done had you become a marine zoologist? You've described the setting at your university as being particularly attractive to somebody in that field.

Meave Leakey: I don't know. I mean, in those days I was already concerned about climates. That was something that always interested me and there was a lot in the oceans that you could find out about climate. I think that connection was of interest. But I also liked marine zoology and the animals. The thing that always has intrigued me is going deep, the sort of work that Sylvia Earle does. I always think that if I hadn't done what I've done, to do what she did would have been fantastic.

Do you scuba dive?

Meave Leakey: Yes, but I'm not very good.

What about books when you were a kid? Were there books that were particularly important to you as a child?

Meave Leakey: I don't recall any more than any others. I think I sort of read what everybody else was reading. I just read everything I could get my hands on.

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