A short history
The origins of IPR are intricately connected with the late patriarch of the Leakey family Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey (LSB Leakey). We have retrieved some interesting documents from our archives outlining the early formative years of the institute, and I bet there are many captivating nuggets of the story surrounding the genesis and early life of IPR that many of us have not heard of until now

In 1958 when Dr LSB Leakey was visiting Ghana he found that his friend, Dr. Alan Angus Booth, had died very suddenly after about nine years of primate research work in Ghana, which he had carried out jointly with his wife, Cynthia Booth. Both of them had been known to LSB for a long time, and both were very highly qualified Cambridge University graduates in Biology and Animal Behavior. LSB enquired of Cynthia what she planned to do now that her husband had died, and she said that she would finish off the publication of their latest joint report, and wind current research, and then she would wish to leave Ghana. After pondering the matter for 24 hours, LSB suggested the next day that she should come and continue research on monkeys with a base somewhere near Nairobi. Accordingly, at the end of 1958 she arrived in Kenya, and the Tigoni Primate Research Centre came into existence.

Cynthia bought a plot of land at Tigoni out of money paid by insurance on her husband’s death, and this money also provided her with a small income, which LSB was able to augment with £600 a year obtained from Chicago. So at first the center operated more or less on a “shoe-string” budget. Cynthia and LSB physically built all the earlier monkey cages, and the laboratory, doing most of the works at weekends to save money on labour charges.

After the Research Centre was established and some 40 monkeys and 5 species were in residence, LSB was able to persuade the National Institute of Health (NIH), Bethesda, USA to provide a 4 year grant and then a 5 year grant thereafter. Tigoni rapidly developed as a research centre, and both Cynthia and LSB attended International Primate Conferences almost every year, to report on their scientific work. The main work over the first eight years was concerned with studies of estrus cycles, birth, sexual behaviour, growth of infants, milk and permanent tooth eruption sequence, and such factual information about many species of East African monkeys which had hitherto been unrecorded. The centre also focused its efforts on collection of East African primate species and on taxonomic studies of the captive animals. LSB pursued his interests in primate behavior as a source of clues to early man lifestyle. One of his greatest legacies stems from his role in fostering field research of primates in their natural habitats, which he understood as key to unraveling the mysteries of human evolution. It has been reported that he personally chose three female researchers, Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Birute Galdikas who were later dubbed ‘Leakeys Angels’ and each went on to become world-renowned scholars in the field of primatology.