jane goodall short biography

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Dame jane goodall, primatologist and anthropologist.

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Walking out on the plains — the smells, the animals, the wildness. It was just complete magic.

Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall was born in London. Her father, Mortimer Morris-Goodall, was a well-known race car driver. From early childhood, Jane was fascinated by all animals, an interest encouraged by her mother, Vanne. When Mortimer Morris-Goodall went to war, young Jane moved with her mother and younger sister, Judy, to live with her grandmother and aunts in the seaside town of Bournemouth, where they remained when her father and mother divorced following the war. A precocious reader in a family of women who encouraged intellectual accomplishment, Jane read everything she could get her hands on about wild animals and Africa. She did well in school despite an unusual neurological condition, known as prosopagnosia, which makes it difficult to recognize faces. Unable to afford a university education, she moved to London after school to work as a secretary for a documentary film company. When an opportunity arose to visit a friend’s family in Kenya, she returned to Bournemouth and worked as a waitress in a local hotel, living at home to save money for her trip. 

In Kenya, Goodall was introduced to the legendary anthropologist Louis Leakey. Leakey hired her as an assistant and secretary, and she accompanied him and his wife Mary on an archeological dig at Olduvai Gorge. A leading authority on the evolution of man, Leakey knew there was a lack of hard data concerning the behavior of chimpanzees — our nearest evolutionary relatives — in the wild. Although Jane lacked scientific training, or even a college degree, she was eager to attempt the research herself. Despite Leakey’s confidence in her abilities, other experienced professionals did not believe a lone young woman from England could survive in the African bush. When the British colonial authorities refused to allow her to travel alone to the chimpanzee reserve near Lake Tanganyika, she recruited her mother to stay with her. In the summer of 1960, Jane Goodall and her mother arrived at Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in what is now Tanzania. At first the Gombe chimps fled at the sight of a human intruder, and Goodall could only observe them from a distance through binoculars. Over the months that followed, she gradually won the trust of a single male chimpanzee she named David Graybeard.

Her habit of giving the chimps human names was a sharp departure from established practice, which dictated that animals be given numbers, not names. It was believed that the numbering system prevented researchers from investing the animals with human emotions, but Goodall believed that understanding animal behavior requires the observer to see animals as individuals, rather than interchangeable specimens. In fact, she found the chimps in her study group to have widely divergent personalities and complex family relationships. Readers of her books have come to know many of the Gombe chimpanzees by name, including the high-ranking female known as Flo, her daughter Fifi, and Fifi’s ferocious son, Frodo.

Early in her stay at Gombe, Goodall observed David Graybeard and the band’s leader, Goliath, stripping the leaves from sticks to use them for collecting and eating termites. Although animals had been seen using objects as tools in the past, it was the first instance of an animal being observed altering an object for a practical purpose —in other words, toolmaking, an activity previously thought to be the defining characteristic of human beings. Goodall also observed chimps pursuing baboons and bush pigs together, an example of cooperative hunting, also thought to be uniquely human behavior.

In Tanzania, Goodall met Hugo van Lawick, a Dutch wildlife photographer and filmmaker. His photographs of Jane Goodall and the Gombe chimps in National Geographic magazine drew widespread attention to her work and helped win increased support for the research.

On the advice of Louis Leakey, Goodall returned to England to earn a doctorate in ethology, the science of animal behavior, at Cambridge University. In 1964, Goodall and Van Lawick were married in London. Her husband held the title of baron in the Netherlands; during their marriage, Jane Goodall was often referred to in the press and elsewhere as Baroness van Lawick. She received her doctorate from Darwin College, Cambridge, in 1965. The couple returned to Tanzania, where she established the Gombe Stream Research Centre.

Goodall’s discoveries gained an international audience when the National Geographic television program Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees was broadcast in 1965. Goodall and Van Lawick’s son, Hugo, known affectionately as “Grub,” was born in 1967. Following the example of the more well-adjusted chimps she had observed, Goodall remained in constant contact with her child for the first three years of his life. For much of the ’70s she promoted the lessons of primatology for successful child rearing. Jane Goodall and Hugo van Lawick divorced in 1974 but remained on good terms for the rest of Van Lawick’s life, collaborating on the documentary film People of the Forest .

In the 1970s, Dr. Goodall began to observe a darker side of chimpanzee life, including a four-year war between two bands of chimps, marked by extreme savagery and acts of cannibalism. Her field research suggests that the aggressive and warlike behavior of humans is deeply rooted in our primate ancestry. Goodall and her allies had long advocated the creation of a national park in Gombe. In the course of this work she met the director of Tanzania’s national park system, Derek Bryceson. The British-born Bryceson was a Royal Air Force veteran who had settled in Tanzania after World War II. A supporter of Tanzanian independence, he was elected to the new country’s National Assembly. Bryceson was profoundly impressed by Goodall’s presentation to the National Assembly. She was moved by his courage in overcoming injuries sustained when he was shot down over Egypt during World War II. Sharing their love for the treasures of Tanzania’s wildlife, Goodall and Bryceson were married in 1975 and made their home at Lake Tanganyika until his death in 1980.

In 1977, Goodall founded the Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education and Conservation. While the Institute initially focused on supporting continued field research on wild chimpanzees, its work has expanded to promoting the power of individuals to protect the environment for all living things. As of this writing, the Goodall Institute has 19 offices around the world, operating community-centered conservation and development programs, principally in Africa. Jane Goodall later founded a youth program, Roots & Shoots, which now operates in more than 50 countries.

For many years, Jane Goodall has been an outspoken opponent of the use of chimpanzees in medical research, and has campaigned for the more humane treatment of research animals when their use cannot be done away with altogether. Other dangers to the world’s chimpanzees include the erosion of their natural habitat through careless development, and the hunting of wild chimpanzees for the luxury “bush meat” trade. Her fight to preserve the world’s chimpanzee population has included service on the board of the world’s largest chimpanzee sanctuary, Save the Chimps, in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Dr. Goodall has received numerous international honors, including the Medal of Tanzania, the National Geographic Society’s Hubbard Medal, the Kyoto Prize of Japan, the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science, and the Gandhi/King Award for Nonviolence. In 2002 the United Nations named her a Messenger of Peace. In a 2003 ceremony at Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth II conferred on Dr. Goodall the title of Dame of the British Empire (DBE), equivalent to a knighthood.

For 45 years, Jane Goodall continued her firsthand observation of the chimpanzees at Gombe, gaining constant insight into the variety of their social behavior, ranging from senseless cruelty to extreme tenderness. As late as 1987, she observed an adolescent chimpanzee adopt a three-year-old orphan who was not a close relative, a demonstration of altruism that was long thought to be beyond the capacity of animals.

The essence of her scientific work appears in her book The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior , the definitive work on the behavior of chimpanzees. Her work forms the core body of knowledge on social learning among chimpanzees. It helped differentiate chimpanzees from a related species, the bonobo, and led to the classification of chimps, bonobos and gorillas — alongside human beings — as hominids.

Dr. Goodall has shared her findings with the general public in a series of highly readable books, including My Friends the Wild Chimpanzees , In the Shadow of Man and Through a Window . She has also written a number of books for children, including  Grub: The Bush Baby , Chimpanzees I Love and My Life with the Chimpanzees . A vast audience has learned of her work through a series of National Geographic television programs and the IMAX film, Jane Goodall’s Wild Chimpanzees . Her other books include two volumes of memoirs and a spiritual autobiography, Reason for Hope , in which she discusses her religious beliefs and her faith in the future of humankind. A more recent work is Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating (2005), in which she encourages her readers to weigh the moral and environmental implications of their dietary choices.

Although Jane Goodall’s discovery of group violence among chimpanzees suggests that aggressive behavior is deeply rooted in our evolutionary past, her observations of kindness and selfless behavior among the chimps of Gombe show that these traits too are part of our evolutionary heritage. She maintains our ability to reason and learn from shared experience will yet enable us to preserve a livable environment for ourselves and all our fellow creatures. Today, Jane Goodall travels nearly 300 days a year, circling the globe to share her message of hope, and encouraging young people to work for a better world.

As a girl in England, Jane Goodall dreamed of traveling to Africa to study animals in the wild. In the summer of 1960, her dream brought her to the shores of Lake Tanganyika, to observe the wild chimpanzees at Gombe Stream. Other scientists did not believe that a 26-year-old woman could survive alone in the bush, but Jane Goodall did more than survive. Her work revolutionized the field of primatology.

Over the years, she found chimpanzees engaging in activities that were once thought definitively human, such as toolmaking, cooperative hunting and even warfare. Her work, the longest continuous field study of any living creature, has forced us to redefine our understanding of what it means to be human, and provided a vital insight into the evolution of our own species.

Today, Jane Goodall travels the world, campaigning for the humane treatment of all animals, and empowering young people in their own efforts to preserve the environment for all living things.

What was it like, coming to Africa for the first time, arriving in Nairobi on your 23rd birthday?

Jane Goodall: I arrived off this boat, having made lots of friends, the way one does on boats, feeling really sad, because — although a lot of us were going by train from Mombassa to Nairobi — it was kind of like the end of this very special little piece of magic, this voyage. It was longer than normal.   We had to go all the way around the Cape because the Suez War was happening, so you couldn’t go through the Suez Canal. Looking out of the train window, seeing giraffes — and I think a couple of elephants — seemed unreal. Then I was met by my school friend and her parents, and we went straight up to where they lived in the White Highlands, and it was getting dark. But I remember, very close to the road, a giraffe. And giraffes are completely unreal creatures. When you see one for the first time in the wild close up, it’s totally magic and… gosh, I was in Africa! And we saw an aardvark, which is very rare to see in the wild. In fact, I’ve only seen one other since, but this one just wandered across the road. I didn’t realize how rare it was. And then got up to this farm house, and the very next morning was woken up and they said, “Come out.” There’s a footprint in the mud of this big leopard, and he’d taken one of their dogs. So it was a real introduction to wild, savage Africa.

You said you were sad. Why were you sad?

Jane Goodall: I was sad because when you get very close to a group of people in an unreal situation like on a boat, when nothing’s really real, it’s like being taken out of the world. There I was with these people that I got to know really well. It was a group of us young women and we were going to say goodbye and probably never see each other again. So it was the end of a piece of magic.

How did your meeting with Louis Leakey come about?

Jane Goodall: I’d been staying with my friend, then I got a job in Nairobi, a very boring one which my uncle had arranged before I ever set off. Being very much “ family family,” they wanted to know I was going to be okay. “You don’t sponge on your friends, so you mustn’t stay more than a month.” A month and a half at the most.

Somebody said, “If you’re interested in animals you must meet Louis Leakey.”   So I rang up.   A voice said, “I’m Leakey.   What do you want?”   He hated the telephone.   So I said I wanted to meet him, and he said, “Come to the museum.”   The natural history museum.   Asked me all these questions, took me around. I think he was amazed that a young girl straight from England with no degree knew so much, because I had done what my mother suggested,   I’d gone on learning about Africa.   I read books, been around the Natural History Museum in London.   So I could answer many of his questions, and he offered me a job just like that, boom, first day.   And I said, rather cheekily, I suppose,   “Well, this is fantastic, but before I settle down to…” — because it was a secretary —    “…to work for you, I must get out into Africa.   I must.   I’ve come all this way and I must go out into the wild and see a lion.”

He let me go with himself, his wife, one other young English girl (Gillian Trace) who also worked at the museum, about five Kenyans, to what is now a very famous place, Olduvai Gorge, where many human fossils have been found. But in those days, only animal fossils. So it was totally unknown, completely wild. There were no people there. There were no roads, there was no trail, there was no track. It was nothing. And the Leakeys had been there about four summers running, because they were convinced that they would find early human remains, which of course they did, but when I went there they hadn’t yet. So there it was, wild untouched Africa. And after this hard work of digging for fossils under the hot sun, Gillian and I were allowed out onto the plains walking, and there were lions, there were rhinos. We just were the two of us. I don’t think other people would be allowed to do that today. It was magic. And that I think is when Louis decided I was the person he’d been looking for.

There you were, working with fossils instead of live animals, which you’d dreamed about all your life. How did you feel about that?

Jane Goodall: When I was at Olduvai, I wasn’t there because I wanted to be a paleontologist, but I was in the middle of the Africa I dreamed about. It was one of the most magic times of my life.   I wasn’t totally thrilled with digging for fossils, but I was totally thrilled with digging for fossils in the middle of the wilderness in Africa. And just every so often, I would hold a bone in my hand and I would almost seem to… it would be almost like a mystical experience. I remember once holding the tusks of one of these big prehistoric pigs and just there stood the pig. And I could smell it and see the color and hear the sound of the pig. And then I came back to reality and it was the bone in my hand. But it was the walking out on the plains, the smell, the animals, the wilderness, the wildness. It was just complete magic. And afterwards, Louis told me that he deliberately selected someone with no degree because he wanted somebody whose mind was, as he said, unbiased by the reductionist attitude of the animal behavior people of that time in Europe, the ethologists. He didn’t tell me that, he just… that’s what his idea was.

Resulting from that dig, and your relationship with the Leakeys, a new project developed. Perhaps it was a project that Dr. Louis Leakey had planned all along, but it took some time to link you to this project. Can you tell me a little bit about how that happened?

Jane Goodall: I think it was the day when I got back to the little camp, in the evening with Gillian, and we’d just encountered this young male lion — about two years old, his mane beginning to sprout — and he’d followed us — oh, I don’t know, I mean the length of a long room, which was a bit scary but it was really exciting. And I was telling Louis about this, and I think that’s when he realized I was the person he’d been looking for to go and try and learn about chimpanzees in the wild. Because his reckoning was, “They are our closest living relatives.” And he didn’t know back then quite how close biologically they actually are to us, but it was known they were close. And so he argued that if somebody would go and learn about them in the wild, if we found behavior that was the same or very similar in chimpanzees today and humans today, then if we agreed that there was a common ancestor about six, seven million years ago, then maybe that behavior was present in the common ancestor. And therefore, we brought it with us, all up through our evolutionary pathway, and that would help him to have a better feeling for how early humans behaved, the creatures whose fossil remains he was digging up. That’s why he wanted somebody to study them, and he asked if I would. Well yes!

• 55 photos

Biography Online

Jane Goodall Biography

“ Chimpanzees have given me so much. The long hours spent with them in the forest have enriched my life beyond measure. What I have learned from them has shaped my understanding of human behaviour, of our place in nature .”

– Jane Goodall

Short Biography Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall was born on, 3rd April 1934 in London, England. Her childhood ambition was to spend time with animals in the wild. In particular, she was drawn to the African continent and the dream of seeing wild animals in their native habitat. It was an unusual ambition for a girl at the time, but it was an ambition supported by her parents, especially her mother. After the war, Jane left school and found work as a secretary at Oxford University. In 1956, Jane jumped at the opportunity to travel to a friend’s farm in Kenya.

“Just remember — if you are really and truly determined to work with animals, somehow, either now or later, you will find a way to do it. But you have to want it desperately, work hard, take advantage of an opportunity — and  never  give up.”

My Life with the Chimpanzees  (1996), p. 113

It was here in Kenya that Jane met the famous anthropologist and palaeontologist, Dr Louis S.B. Leakey. Leakey was impressed with Jane’s enthusiasm and knowledge of Africa and wildlife. As a result, he decided to take Jane to Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania on a fossil-hunting expedition.

In 1960, Leakey and Jane began an important study of wild chimpanzees by Lake Tanganyika in the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve.

With great patience and perseverance, the chimpanzee’s slowly revealed some fascinating habits to the group. These included meat eating – (Chimpanzees had assumed to be vegetarian). Also, Jane saw Chimpanzees making a ‘tool’ out of tree bark to use when extracting termites. This was an important discovery because, at the time, it was assumed only humans made tools. As Jane’s companion, Louis Leakey said at the time:

“Now we must redefine tool, redefine Man, or accept chimpanzees as humans.”

The study of chimpanzees in their native habit was a groundbreaking event, leading to many new observations. It let to Jane’s first article published in National Geographic 1963 “ My Life Among Wild Chimpanzees .” Some aspects of the study were criticised, for example, Jane’s decision to give the Chimpanzees names rather than numbers. Also, some feared her decision to feed the animals may have distorted their behaviour and made them more aggressive. But, other studies had similar effects. After her study, she was invited to participate in a PhD program at Cambridge University – an unusual occurrence for someone without a degree. She earned a doctorate in ethology from Darwin College, the University of Cambridge, in 1964.

In 1977, Jane set up the Jane Goodall Institute which promotes initiatives to look after Chimpanzees and their environment. The institute has many local networks and programs such as Roots and Shoots which have over 10,000 groups in 100 countries.

“The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves. “

In the past few decades, Jane has been increasingly concerned about the damage to the environment, which is especially a problem in Congo and West Africa. Since then she has devoted her time to campaigning and acting as an advocate for environmental charities and concerns. She has an exhaustive travelling schedule and speaks on average 300 times a day, encouraging people to do what they can to create a better world.

For her humanitarian work and environmental charities, she has received numerous awards including being made a Dame of the British Empire, on February 20th, 2004; and in 2002, she was made a United Nations Messenger of Peace by UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan.

Global warming and climate change

In recent years, she has expressed concerns about the changing climate. She was very critical of Donald Trump for pulling America out of the Paris Climate Change Accord. From her time in Africa and Asia in the 1960s, she saw first hand how overconsumption of resources can cause direct environmental problems, such as pollution. She currently sees the biggest challenges to solving global warming as the following:

• “We must eliminate poverty.
• We must change the unsustainable lifestyles of so many of us.
• We must abolish corruption.
• And we must think about our growing human population. “( 1 )

Goodall is vegetarian and believes adopting a vegetarian diet can make a contribution to reducing harmful methane and carbon emissions. Her vegetarianism also stems from her close connection and affinity to the animal kingdom.

Despite the grave challenges facing the world, Goodall remains optimistic because of the resilience of nature and the potential wisdom of humans.

“It’s crazy to think that we can have unlimited economic development on a planet with finite natural resources and a still-growing human population. Something’s got to give,”

Jane Goodall on religion and spirituality

Goodall does not follow a particular religion but has held a long-standing faith in a higher spiritual power, which she feels is strongest when she is out in the wild. Asked about whether she is religious, she replied that whilst a committed scientist, she also believes in the mystical, spiritual dimension of life.

“Thinking back over my life, it seems to me that there are different ways of looking out and trying to understand the world around us. There’s a very clear scientific window. And it does enable us to understand an awful lot about what’s out there. There’s another window; it’s the window through which the wise men, the holy men, the masters of the different and great religions look as they try to understand the meaning in the world. My own preference is the window of the mystic.” (2016, 2 )

She married twice and had a son Hugo Eric Louis ‘grub’ with her first husband Baron Hugo van Lawick. Her second husband was Derek Bryceson, who died of cancer in 1980.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Jane Goodall”, Oxford, www.biographyonline.net , 28th Dec 2010. Last updated 3 November 2019.

My Life with the Chimpanzees

• My Life with the Chimpanzees – Jane Goodall’s relationships with chimpanzees at Amazon

Related pages

Humanitarians  – Famous people who have offered charitable service to others, including Mother Teresa, William Wilberforce, Florence Nightingale and Princess Diana.

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• Jane Goodall Institute
• Jane Goodall Brief Bio

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Equipped with little more than a notebook, binoculars, and her fascination with wildlife, Jane Goodall braved a realm of unknowns to give the world a remarkable window into humankind’s closest living relatives. Trough nearly 60 years of groundbreaking work, Dr. Jane Goodall has not only shown us the urgent need to protect chimpanzees from extinction; she has also redefined species conservation to include the needs of local people and the environment. Today she travels the world, speaking about the threats facing chimpanzees and environmental crises, urging each of us to take action on behalf of all living things and planet we share.

When Jane Goodall entered the forest of Gombe, the world knew very little about chimpanzees, and even less about their unique genetic kinship to humans. She took an unorthodox approach in her field research, immersing herself in their habitat and their lives to experience their complex society as a neighbor rather than a distant observer and coming to understand them not only as a species, but also as individuals with emotions and long-term bonds. Dr. Jane Goodall’s discovery in 1960 that chimpanzees make and use tools is considered one of the greatest achievements of twentieth-century scholarship. Her field research at Gombe transformed our understanding of chimpanzees and redefined the relationship between humans and animals in ways that continue to emanate around the world.

On the path to becoming the world’s leading primatologist, Dr. Jane Goodall redefined traditional conservation. In 1977, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute to support the research in Gombe and scale up the protection of chimpanzees in their habitats. In the late 1980s, it became clear that Gombe was only part of the solution to a much bigger, rapidly growing problem of deforestation and declining chimpanzee populations across Africa. Knowing that local communities are key to protecting chimpanzees, she redefined traditional conservation with an approach that recognizes the central role people play in the well-being of animals and habitat.

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Biographies for Kids

Jane goodall.

• Occupation: Anthropologist
• Born: April 3, 1934 in London, England
• Best known for: Studying chimpanzees in the wild

• Tools - Jane observed a chimp using a piece of grass as a tool. The chimp would put the grass into a termite hole in order to catch termites to eat. She also saw chimps remove leaves from twigs in order to make a tool. This is first time that animals had been observed using and making tools. Prior to this it was thought that only humans used and made tools.
• Meat eaters - Jane also discovered that chimpanzees hunted for meat. They would actually hunt as packs, trap animals, and then kill them for food. Previously scientists thought that chimps only ate plants.
• Personalities - Jane observed many different personalities in the chimpanzee community. Some were kind, quiet, and generous while others were bullies and aggressive. She saw the chimps express emotions such as sadness, anger, and joy.
• There is a carving of the chimp David Greybeard on the Tree of Life at Disney World's Animal Kingdom theme park. Next to it is a plaque in honor of Goodall.
• She established the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977.
• Jane took a break from Africa in 1962 to attend Cambridge University where she earned a Ph.D. degree.
• Chimpanzees communicate through sounds, calls, touch, body language, and facial expressions.
• Jane was married twice and had a son named Hugo.
• Listen to a recorded reading of this page:

How Jane Goodall Became One of the World's Most Notable Scientists—Without a College Degree

In fact, Goodall’s approach – and lack of formal academic training – were key to her method of recording personality traits and naming her subjects, rather than numbering them as tradition dictated at the time.

Goodall couldn't afford college so she attended secretarial training

Born in London, Goodall had long been fascinated by both Africa and animals, says Anita Silvey, author of Untamed: The Wild Life of Jane Goodall . Tarzan books, which, of course. featured a character named Jane, and Dr. Dolittle books were favorites.

"When I was 10, I dreamed of going to Africa, living with animals and writing books about them," Goodall told CNN in 2017 . "Everybody laughed at me because I was just a girl, we didn't have any money [and] World War Two was raging."

Unable to afford college and encouraged by her mother to learn typing and bookkeeping, Goodall sought steady employment by attending secretarial school.

“She needed to support herself and she and her family felt that with secretarial training, she'd always be able to get a job,” Silvey says.

Leaky was drawn to Goodall's observational skills

But Goodall found office work a bore, and when a friend invited her on an extended trip to her family’s farm near Nairobi, Kenya, she spent time waitressing to earn money for the voyage. At 23, she arrived and soon after was offered a job working with famed paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey at a natural history museum. Leakey, according to National Geographic , believed Goodall’s lack of formal scientific training, along with her passion for animals, would make her the right choice to study the social lives of chimpanzees at Gombe and Jane was enthralled by the idea.

“He wanted someone observant and not blinded by scientific theory,” Shivey says. “When he took Jane around in a Jeep, he found she could see and name all the animals in the area.”

Another test: Leakey gave Goodall a deck of cards and asked her which were black and which were red by viewing only the backs of the cards. “She couldn't tell him, but did show him all the bent corners,” Shivey says. “He had run this test a lot of times, often with men, who didn't see the bent corners. In general, Leakey thought women to be more observant than men and chose three women (Goodall, Birutė Galdikas and Dian Fossey ) to research chimps, orangutans and gorillas.”

In her 2010 book, Jane Goodall: 50 Years at Gombe , Goodall notes that because she didn't attend college, Leakey had trouble finding funding for the research.

“Eventually, though, he got a six-month grant from Leighton Wilkie, a Des Plaines, Illinois, businessman with an interest in human evolution,” she writes. “The British authorities had refused to let a young girl go into the forest alone — so my mother, Vanne, volunteered to accompany me.”

In 1960, Goodall began her observations, giving the chimps names, such as Goblin, Freud and Frodo.

“She took an unorthodox approach, immersing herself in their habitat, experiencing their complex society as a neighbor rather than a distant observer, and defying scientific convention by giving them names instead of numbers,” according to the Jane Goodall Institute . “She came to understand them not only as a species, but as individuals with personalities, complex minds, emotions and long-term bonds. Her findings on the tool-making practices of chimpanzees remain one of the most important discoveries in the world of primatology.”

Despite not having an undergraduate degree, Goodall eventually earned her Ph.D.

With Leakey’s influence, according to Shivey, Goodall entered a doctoral program at Cambridge University in 1962 without an undergraduate degree — one of just a handful to do so, though she was not exactly enthusiastic about it.

“I was only doing this thesis for Leakey’s sake,” Goodall told the BBC . “I’d never had an ambition to be a scientist and be part of academia.”

According to the BBC, she was patronized by her mostly male classmates for giving the chimpanzees names and personalities. “I didn’t give them personalities, I merely described their personalities,” she told the news source. “Some scientists actually said I must have taught them (to use tools). That would have been fabulous if I could have done that.”

And, as she said during the 2019 One Young World summit London, her research methods were often dismissed at Cambridge.

“You can’t share your life in a meaningful way with a dog, a cat, a rabbit and so on, and not know the professors were wrong,” she said, according to CNBC . “And now animal intelligence, in particular, is something that people are really interested in.”

Goodall earned a Ph.D. in ethology, the science of animal behavior in 1966, and continued her research at Gombe for 20 more years.

“She was at that point the foremost researcher in chimpanzees in the world,” Shivey says. “When her doctoral thesis was submitted to the committee (with no name given), one of the members said it had to be sent to Jane Goodall, because she knew more about chimpanzees than anyone.”

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Jane Goodall Biography

Born: April 3, 1934 London, England English primatologist and scientist

Jane Goodall was a pioneering English primatologist (a person who studies primates, which is a group of animals that includes human beings, apes, monkeys, and others). Her methods of studying animals in the wild, which emphasized patient observation over long periods of time of both social groups and individual animals, changed not only how chimpanzees (a kind of ape) as a species are understood, but also how studies of many different kinds of animals are carried out.

The older of two sisters, Jane Goodall was born on April 3, 1934, in London, England, into a middle-class British family. Her father, Mortimer Herbert Morris-Goodall, was an engineer. Her mother, Vanna (Joseph) Morris-Goodall, was a successful novelist. When Goodall was about two years old her mother gave her a stuffed toy chimpanzee, which Goodall still possesses to this day. She was a good student, but she had more interest in being outdoors and learning about animals. Once she spent five hours in a hen-house so she could see how a hen lays an egg. She loved animals so much that by the time she was ten or eleven she dreamed of living with animals in Africa. Her mother encouraged Goodall's dream, which eventually became a reality.

When Goodall was eighteen she completed secondary school and began working. She worked as a secretary, as an assistant editor in a film studio, and as a waitress, trying to save enough money to make her first trip to Africa.

An African adventure begins

Jane Goodall finally went to Africa when she was twenty-three years old. In 1957 she sailed to Mombasa on the east African coast, where she met anthropologist Louis Leakey (1903–1972), who would become her mentor, or teacher. In Africa, Leakey and his wife, Mary, had discovered what were then the oldest known human remains. These discoveries supported Leakey's claim that the origins of the human species were in Africa, not in Asia or Europe as many had believed.

Living among chimps

In July 1960, twenty-six-year-old Jane Goodall set out for the first time for Gombe National Park in southeastern Africa to begin a study of the chimpanzees that lived in the forests along the shores of Lake Tanganyika. She had little formal training; still, she brought to her work her love of animals, a strong sense of determination, and a desire for adventure. She thought at the time that the study might take three years. She ended up staying for more than two decades.

In her earliest days at Gombe, Goodall worked alone or with native guides. She spent long hours working to gain the trust of the chimpanzees, tracking them through the dense forests and gradually moving closer and closer to the chimps until she could sit among them—a feat that had not been achieved by other scientists. Her patience produced an amazing set of discoveries about the behaviors and social relations of chimpanzees.

Chimpanzees had been thought to be violent, aggressive animals with crude social arrangements. Researchers had given chimps numbers rather than names and had ignored the differences in personality, intelligence, and social skills that Goodall's studies revealed. Chimpanzees, Goodall showed, organized themselves in groups that had complex social structures. They were often loving and careful parents and also formed attachments to their peers. They hunted and ate meat. And they used simple tools—twigs or grasses that they stripped of leaves and used to get termites out of termite mounds. This discovery helped force scientists to give up their definition of human beings as the only animals that use tools.

In 1962 Leakey arranged for Goodall to work on a doctorate degree at Cambridge University, in England, which would give scientific weight to her discoveries. In 1965 she became the eighth person ever to receive a doctorate from Cambridge without having earned an undergraduate degree.

By 1964 the Gombe Stream Research Center had become the destination of choice for graduate students and other scientists wishing to study chimpanzees or to learn Goodall's methods. The general public was also learning about Goodall's work through a series of articles in National Geographic magazine and later through National Geographic television specials. In 1964 Goodall married Hugo Van Lawick, a Dutch wildlife photographer who had come to Gombe at the invitation of Leakey to take pictures for the magazine. Goodall's son by that marriage, Hugo (more often referred to as Grub), was her only child.

New discoveries

The 1970s saw changes in Goodall's understanding of the chimpanzees and in the way in which research was carried out at Gombe. In 1974 what Goodall referred to as a "war" broke out between two groups of chimpanzees. One group eventually killed many members of the other group. Goodall also witnessed a series of acts of infanticide (the killing of an infant) on the part of one of the older female chimps. These appearances of the darker side of chimpanzee behavior forced her to adjust her interpretation of these animals as being basically gentle and peace loving.

In May 1975 rebels from Zaire, Africa, kidnapped four research assistants from the research center. After months of talks, the assistants were returned. Because of the continued risk of kidnappings, almost all of the European and American researchers left Gombe. Goodall continued to carry out her work with the help of local people who had been trained to conduct research.

A chimp's true friend

Later Goodall turned her attention to the problem of captive chimpanzees. Because they closely resemble humans, chimpanzees have been widely used as laboratory animals to study human diseases. Goodall used her knowledge and fame to work to set limits on the number of animals used in such experiments and to convince researchers to improve the conditions under which the animals were kept. She also worked to improve conditions for zoo animals and for conservation of chimpanzee habitats (the places in the wild where chimps live). In 1986 she helped found the Committee for the Conservation and Care of Chimpanzees, an organization dedicated to these issues. She has even written children's books, The Chimpanzee Family Book and With Love, on the subject of treating animals kindly.

For her efforts Godall has received many awards and honors, among them the Gold Medal of Conservation from the San Diego Zoological Society, the J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize, and the National Geographic Society Centennial Award. In 2000 she accepted the third Gandhi/King Award for Non Violence at the United Nations. Much of Goodall's current work is carried on by the Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education, and Conservation, in Ridgefield, Connecticut. She does not spend much time in Africa anymore; rather, she gives speeches throughout the world and spends as many as three hundred days a year traveling.

For More Information

Goodall, Jane. The Chimpanzees I Love: Saving Their World and Ours. New York: Scholastic Press, 2001.

Goodall, Jane. My Life with the Wild Chimpanzees. New York: Pocket Books, 1988.

Haraway, Donna. Primate Visions. New York: Routledge, 1989.

Meachum, Virginia. Jane Goodall, Protector of Chimpanzees. Springfield, NJ: Enslow Publishers, 1997.

Pratt, Paula Bryant. Jane Goodall. San Diego, CA: Lucent Books, 1997.

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The Story of Jane Goodall: An Inspiring Biography for Young Readers (The Story of Biographies) Paperback – May 19, 2020

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• Independent reading —This Jane Goodall biography is broken down into short chapters and simple language so kids 6 to 9 can read and learn on their own.
• Critical thinking —Kids will learn the Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How of Jane's life, find definitions of new words, discussion questions, and more.
• A lasting legacy —Learn about how Jane made the world a better place for future generations of both humans and animals.
• Part of series The Story Of: A Biography Series for New Readers
• Print length 64 pages
• Language English
• Grade level 3 - 4
• Lexile measure 880L
• Dimensions 5.83 x 0.2 x 8.27 inches
• Publisher Rockridge Press
• Publication date May 19, 2020
• ISBN-10 1646118731
• ISBN-13 978-1646118731
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Susan B. Katz is an author, National Board-Certified Teacher, and educational consultant. She has taught for more than 25 years and has five published books, including My Mama Earth and All Year Round . Visit her online at SusanKatzBooks.com.

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Rockridge Press (May 19, 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 64 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1646118731
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1646118731
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 6 - 9 years, from customers
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 880L
• Grade level ‏ : ‎ 3 - 4
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.83 x 0.2 x 8.27 inches
• #21 in Children's Science Biographies (Books)
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About the author

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Susan B. Katz is an award-winning of over 60 children's books. She is a Spanish bilingual author, National Board Certified Teacher, educational consultant, and social media strategist. As a former bilingual educator of over 25 years, Susan incorporates props, puppets and multimedia into her presentations making them interactive and engaging. Susan has published books with Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, Capstone, Lerner, Bala Kids, and Little Bee. MEDITATION STATION won the International Book Award for Best Children's Mind/Body/Spirit title. THE STORY OF RUTH BADER GINSBURG hit #18 on Amazon overall and #9 among all kids books. ALL YEAR ROUND was named "Best New Book" by The Children's Book Review. She translated it into Spanish as Un Año Redondo. MY MAMA EARTH (Barefoot Books), won the Moonbeam Gold Award for Best Picture Book as well as being named "Top Green Toy" by Education.com. Her most recent book, GAUDI: ARCHITECT OF IMAGINATION got a Starred Review from School Library Journal. Susan is also the Founder and Executive Director of www.ConnectingAuthors.org, a national non-profit bringing children's book authors and illustrators into schools and libraries as role models of literacy and the arts. Ms. Katz served as the Strategic Partner Manager for Authors at Facebook. When she's not writing, Susan enjoys salsa dancing and spending time at the beach. She is also an avid wildlife photographer: www.behance.net/susanbkatz Her website is: www.susankatzbooks.com

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