Colin Leakey

Colin Louis Avern Leakey (13 December 1933, Cambridge, England – 29 January 2018, Lincoln, England) was a leading plant scientist in the United Kingdom, a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge and of the Institute of Biology, and a world authority on beans. Colin Leakey was the son of Louis Leakey (1903–1972), the pioneering paleoanthropologist, and Frida (Avern) Leakey, of Newnham College, Cambridge. His paternal grandparents were Church of England missionaries in British East Africa; his father grew up amidst the Kikuyu people and spent almost all his life in what became Kenya. His parents met in 1927 and married the following year. Their first child was a daughter, Priscilla Muthoni; Colin was their only other child. Louis left Frida just after Colin was born. He grew up with his mother and sister in Cambridge, and did not see his father again until he was 19. By his father's second marriage to Mary Leakey, Leakey was half-brother to Richard, a conservationist, Philip, a politician, and Jonathan, a businessman. Many of the Leakey family have made contributions to archaeology and anthropology. His mother never remarried. After Gresham's School, Holt, Leakey served his national service in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, including a year on the staff of Lord Mountbatten who was then Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet. Leakey then studied physiology, biochemistry, botany and the history and philosophy of science for a first degree at Cambridge University in Natural Sciences. He later trained in tropical agriculture and tropical plant pathology at Exeter University and the University of the West Indies, Trinidad, receiving a postgraduate Diploma in Tropical Agriculture, specialising in tropical plant pathology. At Exeter, he was awarded the Currie Memorial Prize. In 1972, having already taught doctoral students at Makerere University, Uganda, he was awarded a PhD by the University of Cambridge.