We have today received with deep sorrow the sad news of the passing on of Dr. Richard Erskine Frere Leakey, one of Kenya’s pioneer public atheist, humanist, and world-renowned conservationist.

Dr. Leakey was a towering figure for religious skepticism and an inspiration to atheist generations across the world. During a time when atheism and religious skepticism was frowned upon in most parts of Africa, he was a shining beacon of naturalism. Dr. Leakey believed in the power of science as a way of understanding the natural world. He rejected supernaturalism as a way of explaining existence. In the 1970s, Dr. Leakey made groundbreaking discoveries of early hominid fossils. His most famous find came in 1984 with the uncovering of an extraordinary, near-complete Homo erectus skeleton during one of his digs in 1984, which was nicknamed Turkana Boy.

He was also a bold and incorruptible wildlife conservation champion. As the slaughter of African elephants reached a crescendo in the late 1980s, driven by insatiable demand for ivory, Leakey emerged as one of the world’s leading voices against the then-legal global ivory trade. Richard Leakey’s confrontational approach to the issue of human-wildlife conflict in national parks did not win him, friends. His view was that parks were self-contained ecosystems that had to be fenced in and the humans kept out.

Dr. Richard Leaky remains our role model, and his legacy as a passionate scientist, atheist, conservationist, and humanist will endure for many generations to come.