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Through Conservation movement, Chemistry and Physics

Fossey was a leading primatologist and one of The Trimates, a group of female scientists recruited by Leakey to study great apes in their natural environments. Her counterparts Jane Goodall and Birutė Galdikas studied chimpanzees and orangutans, respectively.

Fossey spent 20 years in Rwanda, where she promoted "active conservation", opposed poaching and tourism in wildlife habitats, and made more people acknowledge the sapience of gorillas. After the 1977 killing of her favorite gorilla, Digit, and the deaths of some of the animals she studied most, Fossey devoted less of her time to scientific research and more to protecting the gorillas. Her direct tactics escalated tensions, and she was murdered in her cabin at Karisoke on December 26, 1985. Although Fossey's American research assistant was convicted in absentia, there is no consensus as to who killed her. Fossey was buried beside Digit in the gorilla graveyard she constructed at Karisoke.

Although Fossey had anticipated that the mountain gorilla would not survive to the year 2000, her research and conservation work helped reduce the downward population trend of the species.

Early life

Fossey was born in San Francisco, California, the daughter of Hazel (née Kidd), a fashion model, and George Edward Fossey III, a real estate agent and business owner. Her parents divorced when she was six. Her mother remarried the following year, to businessman Richard Price. Her father tried to keep in contact, but her mother discouraged it, and all contact was subsequently lost. Fossey's stepfather, Richard Price, never treated her as his own child. He would not allow Fossey to sit at the dining room table with him or her mother during dinner. A man adhering to strict discipline, Richard Price offered Fossey little to no emotional support. In 1950, Richard and Hazel relocated with Dian to Marin County, the same county where her father George Fossey, now married to Mrs. Gladys Bove (née Kohler), resided. George and Gladys later divorced. George Fossey's third and final marriage was to Kathryn Smith around 1959. Kathryn has mistakenly been cited as Dian's mother over the years. Struggling with personal insecurity, Fossey turned to animals as a way to gain acceptance. Her love for animals began with her first pet goldfish and continued throughout her life. At age six, she began riding horses, earning a letter from her school; by her college graduation in 1954, Fossey had established herself as an equestrienne.

Education and medical career

Fossey attended Lowell High School. Following her stepfather's guidance, she enrolled in a business course at the College of Marin in Kentfield. However, spending her summer on a ranch in Montana at age 19 rekindled her love of animals, and she enrolled in a pre-veterinary course in biology at the University of California, Davis. In defiance of her stepfather's wish that she attend a business school, Fossey decided to devote her professional life to working with animals. Consequently, Fossey's parents failed to give her any substantial financial support in her adult life. She supported herself by working as a clerk at a White Front department store, doing other clerking and laboratory work, and laboring as a machinist in a factory.

Although Fossey had always been an exemplary student, she had difficulty with chemistry and physics and failed her second year of the program. She transferred to San Jose State College where she became a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority and studied occupational therapy, receiving her bachelor's degree in 1954. Fossey began her career in occupational therapy. She interned at hospitals in California and worked with tuberculosis patients. Fossey had become a prizewinning equestrian, which drew her to Kentucky in 1955, and a year later took a job as an occupational therapist at the Kosair Crippled Children's Hospital in Louisville.

Her shy, reserved personality helped her work well with the children at the hospital. Fossey became close to her coworker, Mary White "Gaynee" Henry, secretary to the hospital's chief administrator and the wife of one of the doctors, Michael J. Henry. The Henrys invited Fossey to join them on their family farm, where she worked with livestock daily and experienced the inclusive family atmosphere that had been missing for most of her life. During her free time, she pursued her love of horses.

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