Primatologist, Environmentalist (1934–2025)
Jane Goodall, who was born in London, dreamed as a child of going to Africa, studying animals and writing books about them. Ultimately, she fulfilled that dream, and more. In 1957, at the age of twenty-two, she traveled to Kenya and sought work with the famed paleontologist Louis Leakey. Believing that we could learn more about human origins by studying our closest primate relatives, he encouraged Goodall (whose “mind was uncluttered by theory”) to do something no one had attempted—to, in effect, imbed herself with chimpanzees in the wild and study their behavior.
After months in the Gombe Stream Natural Park in now-Tanzania, Goodall was accepted by a group of chimps and allowed to observe them. Thus began decades of work in the field, leading to her discovery that chimps used and fashioned tools, a finding that utterly changed conceptions of the differences between humans and other creatures.
Eventually, she shifted from studying chimps to advocating for their survival. This led, in turn, to tireless work as an advocate for ecological awareness. She spoke freely of her consciousness of the Sacred, the presence of a “great spiritual power” that she experienced in all living things, and that “with my Christian upbringing I would call God.” She died on October 1, 2025, at the age of ninety-one.
“We will have to evolve, all of us, from ordinary everyday human beings—into saints! . . . or at least mini-saints.”
—Jane Goodall
