Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall was born on April 3rd, 1934 in London, England. She loved the outdoors from an early age, and dreamed of visiting Africa. Unfortunately, Goodall was unable to pay for college so she instead went to secretarial school, where she learned how to type and bookkeep. She took on various jobs in order to save for a trip to Africa in 1957.
In Africa she began studying chimpanzees and primates under paleontologist Dr. Louis Leakey. A few years later, Dr. Leakey and Goodall started a new research project at Gombe Stream National Park. There Goodall connected with several chimpanzees, who allowed her to watch them and develop somewhat personal relationships with them; she is credited as the first human to ever be accepted into chimpanzee society.
From this experience, Goodall published her first book My Friends, the Wild Chimpanzees, in which she described how chimpanzees were much more similar to humans than previously thought. They were able to build and use tools, something that had defined human intelligence. Fellow scientists were outraged about her methods, stating that her personal connection with the ‘subjects’ of her research inflicted bias on the results. Yet, Goodall continued her work.
She founded the Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Centre in 1992, which fostered over one hundred orphan chimpanzees. Two years later, Goodall established the Lake Tanganyika Catchment Reforestation and Education AKA the "Take Care" project, which aims to reforest deforested chimpanzee habitats and also educate the wider Gombe community about sustainability.
Jane Goodall’s research and advocacy greatly expanded and redefined what we considered to be ‘distinctly human’ characteristics, changing our understanding of ecology and evolution forever.
Image Credit: HUGO VAN LAWICK/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE
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