- Dr. Dian Fossey (1932-1985) was the leading expert on the mountain gorilla. Fossey left her job in 1966 to begin field study in the Virunga Mountain region of Central Africa. Like two other women ethnologists, Jane Goodall, who began studying chimpanzees in 1960, and Biruté Galdikas, who began observing orangutans in 1971, Fossey was chosen by Dr. Louis Leakey. Her study creates an understanding of the maligned gorilla and presents behavioral information previously unknown. This small gorilla population is now less than 240 and is increasingly threatened by land development and slaughter. Forced to leave Africa for health reasons in 1980, Fossey accepted a visiting professorship at Cornell University, and in 1983 her book Gorillas in the Mist was published. In 1982 she began a routine of returning to Africa for six months of fieldwork followed by six months analysis of data in the U.S. In 1985 she was murdered, presumably by poachers, in vengeance for her vigilant environmental and animal protectionist practices. For Fossey, to study these peaceful vegetarian primates was "the chance to do the work you dream of, to study what is most important to you, that is everything."
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