Lecturers 2007-08

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All lectures are free and open to the public. They are held at 4:00 in the auditorium of the Science Center Complex on Roosevelt Drive on the Auburn University Campus. Parking areas nearest the auditorium are the lot in front of Comer Hall on the corner of Roosevelt and College Streets,and the Library parking deck off Roosevelt. Tiger Transit busses (Charcoal Line) run between the Jules-Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts and campus regularly until 6:00 pm weekdays. Persons parking in the Museum lot should be at a bus stop by about 5:30 in order to be sure to catch the last bus back to their car. The nearest bus stop to the COS Auditorium is on Mell Street at Roosevelt.

For more information, contact:
Littleton-Franklin Lectures Program
Department of Biological Sciences
331 Funchess Hall
Auburn University
Auburn, AL 36849-5312
(334)-844-4830

Richard Leakey
October 6th
Sciences Center Auditorium
4:00 pm

Richard Leakey Richard Leakey has been making international headlines for more than 30 years as a global thinker, influential environmentalist, and the world’s best-known paleoanthropologist. Currently a Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Stony Brook University, Leakey, one of the foremost authorities on wildlife and nature conservation, continues to educate others about the dangers of environmental degradation. He established the Stony Brook World Environmental Forum to focus attention on global environmental problems and to mobilize resources for conservation. He also established the Annual Human Evolution Symposium, bringing together international scientists from many disciplines to try to obtain a clearer understanding of the major forces and events that shaped the root of the human lineage.

Leakey served his native Kenya as a senior government official, opposition political activist, conservationist, museum director, scientific researcher and farmer. As Director of the Kenya Wildlife Service from 1989 to 1994, he led a movement to end elephant poaching in Africa that all but eliminated the international ivory trade. Despite government-sponsored verbal and physical attacks, and a plane crash that claimed both of his legs, Leakey continued to oppose corruption and work for governmental change in Kenya. In 2002 he supported the historic presidential election victory of opposition candidate Mwai Kibaki, signaling a new day in Kenya’s future and its fight for democracy.

Leakey is the author of over 100 articles and books, including Origins, The Sixth Extinction, and his memoir, Wildlife Wars: My Fight to Save Africa’s Natural Treasures. He has been profiled on 60 Minutes and was named one of TIME’s 100 Greatest Minds of the 20th Century.