Dr. Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall, known simply as Jane Goodall, was born on April 3, 1934 in Bournemouth, England and died on October 1, 2025 at the age of 91. There are many words that describe her, like trailblazer, pioneer, and inspiration. She was also a teacher, mentor, activist, author, speaker, and scientist, among other things. Her passion for nature and animals started at a young age. While she originally thought she’d become a naturalist and writer in an effort to help animals, as she learned more her goals shifted. After years of work in the field as a primatologist, she became an advocate who was determined to work for a better world and promote protections for vulnerable creatures and ecosystems–efforts that continued until her death. She died of natural causes while on a speaking tour.
As a young woman, Goodall could not afford college and went to secretarial school instead. She had a few jobs in England and saved money to travel to Africa. She left England to visit a family friend in Kenya, eventually landing a job at a natural history museum where she worked as an assistant secretary in Nairobi. Anthropologist and paleontologist Louis Leakey gave her the position and asked her to work in the field searching for fossils. She then went on to study chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania.
This happened at a time when women were typically excluded from scientific pursuits and careers, and she was required to take her mom along because the park warden was worried about her safety. But Leakey thought she was up to the task, and that her lack of a degree would be a benefit to the research because she would come into it with an open mind.
She later earned a graduate degree from the University of Cambridge though she did not carry a baccalaureate degree, one of the few people to do so.
Her approach was unique in many ways. She wanted to not only observe chimpanzees, but to be immersed in their lives. Though some scientists criticized her methods because she wasn’t detached from her research subjects, her efforts gave us many insights.
These included ideas that upended conventional thinking of the time. She saw that chimps had individual personalities; Goodall determined that chimps are not herbivores but omnivores who can hunt for meat; she learned that chimps can also create and use tools, which was thought to be a uniquely human trait. Her work proved that these animals were smarter and capable of far more than we thought.
Her field studies also revealed aggression and violence, which we had thought of as being exclusively human. For example, one group of chimps was observed hunting down and exterminating a smaller group. Though it took about four years, the larger group did not relent until every member of the smaller group was eliminated.
In 2003, Goodall said, "It was a shock to find that they could show such brutal behavior. That made them seem even more like us then I thought before."
Goodall may be the only person to be accepted by chimpanzees into their society. For a time, Goodall touched, groomed, and fed chimps, practices that were later stopped to protect the animals.
In 1986, a primatology conference in Chicago brought her attention to deforestation that seemed to be happening at many research sites, and her focus shifted to activism and conservation. One of her first priorities was to help chimps that were being used in scientific research laboratories.
Her stated goals were, “to foster respect and compassion for all living things, to promote understanding of all cultures and beliefs, and to inspire each individual to take action to make the world a better place for people, other animals, and the environment."
She wanted people to know that they could have an impact no matter where they are. Whether we live in a remote, wild place, or the center of a city, we can make choices that help the environment and the world.
This work kept her very busy and she often traveled more than 300 days every year to spread knowledge and understanding and help protect precious resources.
She founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977. Her awards include the Kyoto Prize (1990), Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (2004), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2025). She wrote 32 books, and the first–In the Shadow of Man (1971)–has been translated into 48 languages.
"Every single one of us matters, every single one of us has a role to play, and every single one of us makes a difference every single day." -- Dr Jane Goodall
Sources: National Geographic, NPR, The Conversation, The Associated Press