Who is Sapolsky's Baboons from A Primate's Memoir and what is their importance?

Robert Sapolsky is currently the John A. and Cynthis Fry Gunn Professor of biology, neurology and neurological science at Stanford and serves the National Museums of Kenya as a research associate. But he was not always so renowned. In A Primate's Memoir, Robert is a young man with a lifelong interest in primatology. While he initially wanted to work with gorillas, necessity pushed him into field research with baboons. While Sapolsky heavily researched the area in Kenya where he would be stationed, living in Kenya was an entirely different matter. As a young, green undergraduate student, he was easily scammed and left to his own devices by the administrative staff at his university. Over the months he studied and worked there, he learned the ropes.