George and Joy Adamson

George Adamson, the "Lion Man" of Africa was one of the founding fathers of wildlife conservation and an author. He and his wife Joy Adamson are best known through the book and film "Born Free", which depicts the true story of Elsa, an orphaned lioness cub they raised and later released into the wild.

Adamson was born in Dholpur,Rajasthan , India in 1906 then British India. He first visited Kenya in 1924. After a series of adventures, which included time as a gold prospector, he joined Kenya's game department in 1938 and, six years later, married Joy. It was in 1956 that he shot the lioness whose cub was to become world-famous as Elsa.

She was born Joy Friedericke Victoria Gessner in Troppau, Silesia, Austria-Hungary (now Opava, Czech Republic). With her third husband, George Adamson, she made her home in Kenya on the shores of Lake Naivasha. She studied and painted animals in the wild, and became famous as a result of the publication of Born Free in 1960.

George Adamson retired as a game warden in 1963 and devoted himself to his many lions. In 1970, he moved to the Kora National Reserve in northern Kenya, working with Tony Fitzjohn as his right hand man, to continue the rehabilitation of captive or orphaned big cats for eventual reintroduction into the wild. George and Joy separated in 1970, but continued to spend Christmases together.

In 1989 at the age of 83, Adamson was shot to death at Kora by Somali poachers. Joy herself had been murdered in 1980.(Wikipedia)