Dian Fossey

Dian Fossey was an American zoologist who studied gorillas in Africa. Her research and life in the mountain forests of Rwanda made her famous. She wrote a book about her work, ‘Gorillas in the Mist’. A major Hollywood studio paid her a million dollars for the movie rights. Her brutal murder in 1985 had to be added to the film.

Fossey was born in 1932. She became interested in animals from a very early age and enrolled on a veterinary course. At university, she studied occupational therapy, which would help her later research. She became interested in Africa in her late twenties. She took out a loan and went to Tanzania, where she met the man who would change her life, anthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey.