(1932–85), U.S. zoologist, born in San Francisco, Calif.; moved to Louisville, Ky., after college to work with disabled children; visited Africa in 1963; in 1967 began her long-term study of mountain gorillas, an endangered species among whom she lived, studying and documenting their behavior for 18 years in the Virunga Mountains in east-central Africa; became leading authority on the gorillas; founded Karisoke Research Centre in forests of Rwanda as home base for her work; wrote ‘Gorillas in the Mist' (1983), describing her observations and arguing for conservation of the gorillas; story made into a motion picture in 1988; murdered, probably by poachers, in December 1985.