The article presents a biography of Leiu Heapost, one of the most versatile anthropologists in Estonia. She was born in Muhu Island on March 13, 1936. She became a biology student at the University of Tartu in 1958 and graduated in 1963 with a thesis about the anthropology of school children's physical development. She initiated the systematic population genetic research of Estonians and one of the first Estonian palaeoanthropologists who dealt with craniology or osteology as a whole.