Dian Fossey Biography

Dian was interested in animals from childhood, but changed college courses from pre-veterinary studies to occupational therapy. She moved to Louisville, KY to be director of the Kosair Crippled Children's Hospital occupational therapy department, but felt compelled to satisfy her long-standing desire to visit Africa.

On her first trip to Africa in 1963, she met paleontologists Mary and Louis S B Leakey, who encouraged her dream to live and work with mountain gorillas. When Louis Leakey, somewhat facetiously, suggested that Fossey have her appendix prophylactically removed before living in a remote area, her having the operation so convinced him of her determination that he invited her to begin fieldwork in 1966.

She lived among the mountain gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) until civil war forced her to escape to Rwanda. She established the Karisoke Research Foundation in 1967, alternating her time between her fieldwork there and obtaining a PhD based on her research (Cambridge University, 1976), accepting a visiting associate professorship at Cornell and writing her best-selling book, Gorillas in the Mist in 1983.

She was considered the world's leading authority on the physiology and behaviour of mountain gorillas, and portrayed these animals as dignified, highly social, 'gentle giants' with individual personalities and strong family relationships.

Her active conservationist stand against game wardens, zoo poachers and government officials who wanted to convert gorilla habitats to farmland caused her to fight for the gorillas not only via the media, but also by destroying poachers' dogs and traps.

Tragically she was found hacked to death, presumably by poachers, in her Rwandan forest camp in December 1985.

In 1988, Dian’s story was made into a film starring Sigourney Weaver. The film went on to win five Oscars including Best Actress for Weaver.