Leslie Aiello (APS, 2014)

Leslie Aiello was President of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (2005-2017) and Professor of Biological Anthropology at University College London (1976-2005). Her academic interests focus on human evolution, including life history, energetics, and the evolution of the brain and cognition. She received her BA and MA in Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her PhD in human evolution and anatomy from the University of London. She is currently on the Board of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and is co-authoring a textbook entitled Who We Are and Where We Came From: An Introduction to Modern Biological Anthropology.

Oral History Highlights

What were your interests as a child? What did you enjoy doing?

Leslie Aiello: My mother used to say I enjoyed playing dirty, and she wasn't at all surprised when I went into archeology.