Richard Leakey
The son of famed anthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey, Richard Leakey began his own career as a paleoanthropologist after discovering a fossilized australopithecine jaw near Lake Natron in Tanzania. He went on to make several important hominid fossil discoveries that placed human ancestors in Africa as early as 3.5 million years ago. In 1989, he became director of the Kenya Wildlife Service, where he halted the country’s rampant elephant poaching and helped pass a worldwide ban on the ivory trade. In 1995, after leaving the government, he formed Safina-Swahili for “Noah’s Ark”-a new Kenyan reformist political party.
Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall is the world’s foremost authority on chimpanzees, having closely observed their behavior for the past quarter century in the jungles of the Gombe Stream Game Reserve in Tanzania. The recipient of dozens of awards, Dr. Goodall received her Ph.D. from Cambridge University in 1965 and has been the scientific director of the Gombe Stream Research Center since 1967.
Dr. Goodall has expanded her global outreach with the founding of the Jane Goodall Institute, based in Ridgefield, Connecticut. She now teaches and encourages young people to appreciate all creatures through the institute’s Roots & Shoots program.
Linus Pauling
Chemist Linus Pauling’s discovery of sickle-cell anemia’s genetic cause and his application of quantum mechanics to molecules won him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1954. Nine years later, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his antinuclear activism, which included presenting a petition signed by eleven thousand scientists warning the public about the biological danger of radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing. Known as a champion of Vitamin C’s curative powers, Pauling researched the genetic mechanisms of disease at many universities and at the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine. He died in 1994 at age ninety-three.
Theo Colburn
Theo Colburn is senior scientist and director of the Wildlife and Contaminants project at the World Wildlife Fund. She started her career as a zoologist late in life, after she and her husband retired from a successful pharmacy business to raise sheep. She became alarmed by pollution in the Gunnison River near their ranch in Colorado. Her involvement in Western water issues led her to seek a master’s degree in ecology and a Ph.D. in zoology. Her pioneering work on the effects of synthetic chemicals on the endocrine system published in her 1996 book Our Stolen Future has led some to compare her to Rachel Carson, who warned the world about the dangers of DDT. Colborn has received many prestigious awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Council for Science and the Environment.