Born in San Francisco, California, on January 16, 1932, Dian Fossey was permitted as a child to keep only goldfish as pets. She entered the University of California at Davis as a preveterinary student, but transferred to San Jose State University where she earned a B.A. in 1954. During her undergraduate years she became a prize-winning equestrienne, and so she naturally headed to Kentucky for her first job in 1956 after completing her clinical training. She became director of occupational therapy for the Kosair Crippled Children╒s Hospital in Louisville, remaing there for seven years. During that time, she became increasingly curious about gorillas and began making plans that would take her to see them in their indigenous African habitat.
In 1963 she planned a seven-week safari, paid for with a personal bank loan. Her initial stop was with Mary and Louis Leakey, in their camp at Olduvai Gorge, where they were engaged in a hunt for clues to early human life. There she dubiously distinguished herself by shattering her ankle while scurrying down a hill to examine a newly found fossil. Nonetheless, she made her way to Zaòre (then called the Congo) two weeks later for her first meeting with the reclusive mountain gorilla.
Although stunned and impressed by her meeting with the giant gorilla, she returned to her job in Kentucky. In 1966 Louis Leakey visited her there to encourage her to return to Africa and to pursue her dream of studying gorillas. On the ╥advice╙ of her new mentor, Fossey had her appendix removed as a supposedly prophylactic measure for life as a researcher on the African continent. This tip was later revealed to be Leakey╒s way of testing Fossey╒s resolve, but she never wavered. By late 1966 she was back in Africa, funded initially by the Wilkie Brothers╒ Foundation and the National Geographic Society. She visited Jane Goodall in Tanzania to learn methods of fieldwork and data collection, then went alone to the Congo.
She quickly learned methods of imitation that gained the curiosity and trust of the huge, usually skittish, gorillas and developed regular observations of three different groups. Political troubles ended her research after seven months and armed guards took her into custody. Escaping into Uganda by a ruse, she was warned that her return would entail certain death. Instead, she turned to tiny Rwanda to establish the Karisoke Research Centre in the Parc National des Volcans that abutted the area previously studied.
There Fossey resumed her work, employing innovative methods that allowed her to study the gorillas at close range. She imitated their sounds, pretended to eat similar food and mimicked their grooming practices. In Rwanda she studied fifty-one gorillas living in four stable groups. She found them to be vegetarian nomads, who, despite their fearsome image, were quite peaceful in their behavior. What particularly intrigued Fossey were the strong family ties that existed among members of the same group. They nursed one another and adjusted the pace of group movement to accommodate members weakened by sickness or injury.
Fossey left Africa briefly in 1970 to complete work for a doctorate at Cambridge University. In 1974 she received her degree in zoology with the completion of her dissertation, The Behavior of the Mountain Gorilla. After several years of living and working as a lone Westerner, Fossey decided she needed research assistance and accepted a series of student volunteers who made broader kinds of research possible. Working with Fossey and the indigenous trackers and other Africans who had helped Fossey keep her camp supplied, the new researchers began a parasitology project through examining gorilla dung. They also helped to complete a census of the gorilla groups that Fossey had already studied.
Motivated by the killing of Digit, one of her favored gorillas, whose death was announced on CBS News, Fossey generated international media coverage in 1978 in her battle against poachers. Six months later, despite the publicity and increased anti-poaching patrols, two more gorillas were killed, decimating one of the groups she had been studying. Fossey later denied reports of a nervous breakdown following those deaths, but she never denied the grief she experienced.
In 1980, needing respite from Africa to restore herself to physical and emotional health, she returned to the U.S. to accept a visiting associate professorship at Cornell University. While teaching, Fossey also completed Gorillas in the Mist, 1983, which received positive reviews from the mass media but was criticized by specialists for its attempt to appeal to a popular audience by sacrificing its scientific content. Her work was also published in National Geographic and she was featured in a number of the television specials.
Fossey completed her contract at Cornell and returned home to Africa, telling interviewers and journalists that she was more comfortable with gorillas than with people. Back in Rwanda, she resumed her campaign against poachers who were once again encroaching on the parkland. Fossey╒s body was discovered slain, near the Karisoke Center on December 26, 1985. Though no assailant was ever identified, it is widely suspected she was killed by the poachers against whom she had struggled for so long.
