Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall
Dame Jane Morris Goodall (/ˈɡʊdɔːl/; born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall; 3 April 1934 – 1 October 2025), formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, was an English primatologist and anthropologist.[3] She was considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, having studied the social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees for over 60 years. Goodall first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania to observe its chimpanzees in 1960.[4]
Goodall was the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots programme and had worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues. She was on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project from 2022 until her death in 2025.[5][6] In April 2002, she was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace. Goodall was an honorary member of the World Future Council.
Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall was born in April 1934 in Hampstead, London,[7][8] to businessman Mortimer Herbert Morris-Goodall (1907–2001) and Margaret Myfanwe Joseph (1906–2000),[9] a novelist from Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire,[10] who wrote under the name Vanne Morris-Goodall.[7]
After the family moved to Bournemouth, Goodall attended Uplands School, an independent school in nearby Poole.[7]
When she was a child, Goodall's father gave her a stuffed toy chimpanzee named Jubilee as an alternative to a teddy bear. Goodall had said her fondness for it sparked her early love of animals, commenting, "My mother's friends were horrified by this toy, thinking it would frighten me and give me nightmares." Jubilee still sits on Goodall's dresser in London.[11]
Goodall had always been drawn to animals and Africa, which brought her to the farm of a friend in the White Highlands in the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya in 1957.[12] From there, she obtained work as a secretary, and acting on her friend's advice, she telephoned Louis Leakey,[13] the Kenyan archaeologist and palaeontologist, with no other thought than to make an appointment to discuss animals. Leakey, believing that the study of existing great apes could provide indications of the behaviour of early hominids,[14] was looking for a chimpanzee researcher, though he kept the idea to himself. Instead, he proposed that Goodall work for him as a secretary. After obtaining approval from his co-researcher and wife, British palaeoanthropologist Mary Leakey, Louis sent Goodall to Olduvai Gorge in Tanganyika (later part of Tanzania), where he laid out his plans.[15]
In 1958, Leakey sent Goodall to London to study primate behaviour with Osman Hill and primate anatomy with John Napier.[16] Leakey raised funds, and on 14 July 1960, Goodall went to Gombe Stream National Park, becoming the first of what would come to be called The Trimates.[17] She was accompanied by her mother, whose presence was necessary to satisfy the requirements of David Anstey, chief warden, who was concerned for their safety.[12] Goodall credits her mother with encouraging her to pursue a career in primatology, a male-dominated field at the time. Goodall has said that women were not accepted in the field when she started her research in the late 1950s.[18] As of 2019, the field of primatology is made up almost evenly of men and women, in part thanks to the trailblazing work of Goodall and her encouragement of young women to join the field.[19]