When Jane Goodall walked into the forests of Gombe in 1960, she was a 26-year-old with no degree, no field training, and only a notebook and binoculars. By the time she left decades later, she had changed the way the world thinks about animals. Moreover, she influenced how we think about ourselves.
Jane Goodall, who died on October 1 in Los Angeles at 91, was more than a scientist. She was a patient observer, a gifted storyteller, and a tireless activist whose life blurred the lines between research, empathy, and advocacy.
A childhood dream takes root
Born in London in 1934, Jane Goodall grew up with stories of Tarzan and Doctor Dolittle. While other girls collected dolls, she carried Jubilee, a toy chimpanzee her father had given her. Far from frightening her, Jubilee fueled her fascination.
That fascination carried her to Kenya, where she met anthropologist Louis Leakey. Seeing her passion, Leakey sent her to Tanzania’s Gombe Stream Reserve to study wild chimpanzees. This task was usually reserved for men with years of training. What she lacked in formal education, she made up for with persistence.
Discoveries that shook science
Jane Goodall’s approach was radical in its simplicity: she lived among the chimpanzees, quietly watching for hours until they accepted her. That patience was rewarded with revelations. These overturned scientific dogma.
She saw chimpanzees strip twigs to fish termites from mounds. This was evidence of tool use, long thought to be the defining trait of humans. She described their emotional lives: affection between mothers and infants, reconciliation after fights, even acts of aggression that led to years-long territorial wars.
Jane Goodall’s habit of naming chimpanzees — David Greybeard, Flo, Fifi — scandalized fellow scientists who insisted on numbers. But the names stuck, and with them, the idea that chimpanzees were not data points but personalities. Goodall’s work expanded science’s vocabulary for talking about animal life.
The world listens
A 1963 National Geographic feature brought Jane Goodall to global attention, with images captured by Dutch photographer Hugo van Lawick, whom she later married. Books such as In the Shadow of Man and Through a Window reached audiences far beyond academia.
Goodall became a bridge between science and the public. Her calm voice made discoveries feel intimate. She wasn’t afraid of complexity. Chimpanzees, she showed, could be violent and compassionate, destructive and tender — mirrors of our own contradictions.
From researcher to advocate
By the 1980s, Goodall was spending less time in the forests and more on airplanes. The reason was urgent: chimpanzees were vanishing as deforestation and poaching spread across Africa.
She founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 to protect great ape habitats. Moreover, she launched Roots & Shoots in 1991, mobilising young people around the world to act on environmental issues. Her message was consistent: conservation is not someone else’s job — it begins with individual choices.
Governments honored her with titles and medals, including the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2025. But what made her most influential was her ability to inspire — in classrooms, conference halls, and living rooms.
Click here to discover her contribution to scientific community https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/jane-goodall/
Not without controversy
Goodall’s career was not untouched by criticism. Some scholars argued she anthropomorphised chimpanzees, projecting human qualities onto them. Others took issue with her later opposition to biotechnology. A plagiarism controversy over her 2013 book briefly cast a shadow.
But her critics never denied her impact. If anything, the debates underscored how much she had transformed primatology. Additionally, they highlighted how she had forced science to confront the tension between detachment and empathy.
In 2016, during Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign, Jane Goodall compared his public behavior to dominance rituals she had observed in male chimpanzees. Drawing from decades of fieldwork, she noted that chimpanzees aiming to climb the social ladder often put on dramatic displays — stomping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, and hurling objects — to intimidate rivals and assert control.
Jane Goodall explained that the more intense and creative these performances, the quicker a male chimpanzee could rise in rank and hold his position. Her remarks, shared in an interview with The Atlantic, reflected her deep understanding of primate behavior. They showed how it sometimes mirrors human social dynamics.
A legacy of hope
To watch Jane Goodall was to see a paradox. The closer she drew to chimpanzees, the more she revealed about humans. Her insistence on patience, respect, and wonder redefined what it means to study animals — and what it means to live with them.
She often said: “The greatest danger to our future is apathy.”
In a world facing ecological crises, her words echo louder than ever. Jane Goodall did not simply document the lives of chimpanzees. She taught us that how we see them — and how we act upon that knowledge — could shape the survival of both their world and ours.
