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Show Leakey, RJ.P. Once in a great while there comes along a man who brings such great personal flair to his field that he draws new attention and growth to his profession. What Denton Cooley did for heart surgery and what Werner Von Braun did for space exploration -is what Louis Leakey did for anthropology. Leakey, who was to speak here in a Frontiers of Science lecture in a few weeks, presented the study of pre-historic man in contemporaneous contempor-aneous terms. He made it applicable appli-cable to today, and he made it exciting. ex-citing. He had a tremendous sense of public relations. He was not always highly regarded re-garded by his fellow anthropologists. anthropolog-ists. They admonished his grandstanding grand-standing and occasional inaccuracies. inaccur-acies. His claim of finding a new species of pre-historic man - Zin-janthropus Zin-janthropus - has been generally dismissed now after years of close examination. Other anthropologists resented the fact that Leakey was never at a loss for funds on his schemes while they had to beg dimes for equally meritorious projects. pro-jects. But it cannot be denied that Leakey made his contribution . . . and in major terms. His work with his wife at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania Tan-zania is an ethnographic watershed. His expertise on the Kikuyu will also survive him. But perhaps his public relations work - unmentioned in scholarly journals - is most important of all. He focused attention again on that neglected science, the history of man. |