The Trimates

In 1956, he sent his secretary, Rosalie Osborn, to Mount Muhabura in Uganda to "help habituate" gorillas,[5] but she returned to England after four months.

With donations from sources including the National Geographic Society and the Wilkie Foundation,[6] the Tigoni Research Center helped secure funding for all three of the women Leakey dubbed the "Trimates".

A fourth researcher, Toni Jackman, had been selected to study bonobos in Africa, but the necessary financing and permits had not yet been secured before Leakey's death.

Jane Goodall began her first field study of chimpanzee culture in the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania.

From there, she obtained work as a secretary, but acting on her friend's advice she telephoned Louis Leakey with no other thought than to make an appointment to discuss animals.

After obtaining the approval of his co-researcher and wife, noted British paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey, Louis sent Goodall to Olduvai Gorge, where he confessed his plans.

Happening to visit Olduvai, she came to Leakey's attention by spraining her ankle, falling into the excavation, and vomiting on a giraffe fossil.

The next day after an hour's interview at Leakey's hotel, he hired her to observe gorillas, taking up where George Schaller had left off.

[citation needed] Goodall and Fossey were well under way in their study programs in Africa when Birutė Galdikas attended a March 1969 lecture by Leakey at UCLA, where she was a student.