HERI is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Kenyan paleoanthropologist Isaiah Nengo. Nengo was Associate Director of the Turkana Basin Institute (TBI) and its Director for Research & Science.

Nengo also spearheaded a master's programme in human evolutionary biology at Turkana University, which he designed to build local expertise and research capacity in Africa.

The TBI announced the news of Nengo’s passing on Monday 24 January 2022, calling him, "a visionary, a high achiever and a brilliant scientist. He will be greatly missed."

Nengo was greatly influenced by the TBI’s late founder, Richard Leakey, who passed on 2 January of this year. According to a National Geographic article about Nengo and his work, Nengo’s passion for human evolution was born in high school after hearing Leakey lecture at the National Museums of Kenya.

Nengo went on to receive his PhD from Harvard University. In 2014 he led an expedition that unearthed a 13-million-year-old infant ape skull in the Turkana Basin. Nicknamed Alesi, from the Turkana word for “ancestor.” it is the most complete fossil skull of an ape ever found.

“Both Isaiah and Richard made huge contributions to the study of human origins in Africa, particularly in their own country of Kenya” says HERI Director Dr Robyn Pickering.

Recalling the words of Maya Angelou in her poem When Great Trees Fall, she says, “Kenya, Africa and indeed the whole field of palaeoanthropology have lost two great trees.”