Joy Adamson

Friederike Victoria "Joy" Adamson was a naturalist, artist and author. Her book, Born Free, describes her experiences raising a lion cub named Elsa. In 1977, she was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art.

Adamson was born to Victor and Traute Gessner in Troppau, Silesia, Austria-Hungary (now Opava, Czech Republic), the second of three daughters.  During Elsa's lifetime, Joy and George Adamson needed each other to educate her, but after she died and her cubs were taken in by the park, their interests went in separate directions, as did their lives.

While neither wanted a divorce nor a legal separation, their conflicting interests (George wanted to continue to work with lions and she with cheetahs) made it necessary for them to live apart (though they sometimes discussed living together again, they never did).