Dame Jane Morris Goodall (; born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall; 3 April 1934), formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English primatologist and anthropologist. She is considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, after 60 years studying the social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees. Goodall first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania to observe its chimpanzees in 1960.
She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots programme, and she has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues. As of 2022, she is on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project. In April 2002, she was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace. Goodall is an honorary member of the World Future Council.
Early years
Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall was born in April 1934 in Hampstead, London, to businessman Mortimer Herbert Morris-Goodall (1907–2001) and Margaret Myfanwe Joseph (1906–2000), a novelist from Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, who wrote under the name Vanne Morris-Goodall.
The family later moved to Bournemouth, and Goodall attended Uplands School, an independent school in nearby Poole.
As a child, Goodall's father gave her a stuffed toy chimpanzee named Jubilee as an alternative to a teddy bear. Goodall has 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.
Africa
Goodall had always been drawn to animals and Africa, which brought her to the farm of a friend in the Kenya highlands in 1957. From there, she obtained work as a secretary, and acting on her friend's advice, she telephoned Louis Leakey, 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, 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 paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey, Louis sent Goodall to Olduvai Gorge in Tanganyika (modern Tanzania), where he laid out his plans.
In 1958, Leakey sent Goodall to London to study primate behaviour with Osman Hill and primate anatomy with John Napier. 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. 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. Goodall credits her mother with encouraging her to pursue a career in primatology, a male-dominated field at the time. Goodall has stated that women were not accepted in the field when she started her research in the late 1950s. , the field of primatology is made up almost evenly of men and women, in part thanks to the trailblazing of Goodall and her encouragement of young women to join the field.
Leakey arranged funding, and in 1962 he sent Goodall, who had no degree, to the University of Cambridge. She was the eighth person to be allowed to study for a PhD at Cambridge without first having obtained a bachelor's degree. She went to Newnham College, Cambridge, where she received her Bachelor of Arts in natural sciences by 1964, which is when she went up to the new Darwin College, Cambridge, for a Doctor of Philosophy in ethology. Her thesis was completed in 1966 under the supervision of Robert Hinde on the Behaviour of free-living chimpanzees, detailing her first five years of study at the Gombe Reserve.
On 19 June 2006, the Open University of Tanzania awarded her an honorary Doctor of Science degree.
Work
Research at Gombe Stream National Park
Goodall studied chimpanzee social and family life beginning with the Kasakela chimpanzee community in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania, in 1960. She found that "it isn't only human beings who have personality, who are capable of rational thought [and] emotions like joy and sorrow." She also observed behaviours such as hugs, kisses, pats on the back, and even tickling, what we consider "human" actions. Goodall insists that these gestures are evidence of "the close, supportive, affectionate bonds that develop between family members and other individuals within a community, which can persist throughout a life span of more than 50 years."