Dian Fossey was an American primatologist and conservationist. She spent 20 years in Rwanda, where she actively supported conservation efforts. She was murdered in her cabin at a remote camp in Rwanda in December 1985. Her research and conservation work largely helped reduce the downward population trend in mountain gorillas, saving them from extinction. Her book Gorillas in the Mist, a book published two years before her death, is her account of her scientific study of the gorillas at Karisoke Research Center and prior career.
About Dian Fossey in brief
Dian Fossey was an American primatologist and conservationist. She spent 20 years in Rwanda, where she actively supported conservation efforts. She was murdered in her cabin at a remote camp in Rwanda in December 1985. Her research and conservation work largely helped reduce the downward population trend in mountain gorillas, saving them from extinction. Her book Gorillas in the Mist, a book published two years before her death, is her account of her scientific study of the gorillas at Karisoke Research Center and prior career. It was adapted into a 1988 film of the same name, “Gorillas In The Mist” The film was based on the book and the book was written by Jane Goodall, who studied chimpanzees, and Birutė Galdikas who studied orangutans. The film also starred William Holden, the owner of Nairobi, Kenya, and William Holden’s son, William “Billy” Holden, who was a friend of Dian’s father, George E. Fossey III, and her stepfather, Richard Price. Dian’s love for animals began with her first pet goldfish and continued throughout her entire life. At age six, she began riding horses, earning a letter from her school; by her graduation in 1954, she had established herself as an equestrienne. In 1963, she took out her life savings and went on a seven-week visit to Kenya. While there, she met actor William Holden. She turned down an offer to join the Henrys on an African tour due to lack of finances, but in 1963 she borrowed 8,000 USD to go on the tour.
In 1966, she became a member of the \”Trimates\”, a group formed of prominent female scientists originally sent by paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey to study great apes in their natural environments. In defiance of her step father’s wishes for her to attend a business school, Dian decided to spend her professional life working with animals. She interned at various hospitals in California and worked with tuberculosis patients. Her shy and reserved personality allowed her to work well with the children at the hospital. She became close with her coworker Mary White, secretary to the hospital’s chief administrator and one of the chief doctors’s wife, Michael J. Henry. She also experienced an inclusive family atmosphere that had been missing for most of her life. She had difficulties with basic sciences including chemistry and physics, and failed her second year of the program. She enrolled in a pre-veterinary course in biology at the University of California, Davis, and she earned her bachelor’s degree in 1954. She supported herself by working as a clerk at a White Front department store, doing other clerking and laboratory work, and laboring as a machinist in a factory. In 1955, she moved to Kentucky in 1955, and a year later took a job as an occupational therapist at the Kosair Crippled Children’s Hospital in Louisville. She later became a prizewinning equestrian, which drew her to Louisville in 1955.
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