Dian Fossey

Dr Dian Fossey was the world authority on the endangered mountain gorilla. As founder and coordinator of the Karisoke Research Center, Dr Fossey spent thirteen years in the remote rain forests of the volcanic Virunga Mountains. Working from a base camp ten thousand feet above sea level, she struggled with agoraphobia on forty-five degree slopes, torrential rains, hail and fog, foot-deep mud, poachers and revolution. She went to the USA in 1980 as a visiting associate professor of Cornell University, New York. Her memoir, GORILLAS IN THE MIST, was first published in 1983, and adapted as a film starring Sigourney Weaver in 1988. Dr Fossey was murdered in Rwanda in December 1985.