Jane Goodall obit

Jane Goodall, conservationist renowned for chimpanzee research and environmental advocacy, has died

 

She was not on the list.

Jane Goodall, the conservationist renowned for her groundbreaking chimpanzee field research and globe-spanning environmental advocacy, has died. She was 91.

The Jane Goodall Institute announced the primatologist’s death Wednesday in an Instagram post. According to the institute, Goodall died of natural causes while in California on a U.S. speaking tour.

Her discoveries “revolutionized science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world,” the Institute said.

While living among chimpanzees in Africa decades ago, Goodall documented the animals using tools and doing other activities previously believed to be exclusive to humans, and also noted their distinct personalities. Her observations and subsequent magazine and documentary appearances in the 1960s transformed how the world perceived not only humans’ closest living biological relatives but also the emotional and social complexity of all animals, while propelling her into the public consciousness.

“Out there in nature by myself, when you’re alone, you can become part of nature and your humanity doesn’t get in the way,” she told The Associated Press in 2021. “It’s almost like an out-of-body experience when suddenly you hear different sounds and you smell different smells and you’re actually part of this amazing tapestry of life.”

In her later years, Goodall devoted decades to education and advocacy on humanitarian causes and protecting the natural world. In her usual soft-spoken British accent, she was known for balancing the grim realities of the climate crisis with a sincere message of hope for the future.

From her base in the British coastal town of Bournemouth, she traveled nearly 300 days a year, even after she turned 90, to speak to packed auditoriums around the world. Between more serious messages, her speeches often featured her whooping like a chimpanzee or lamenting that Tarzan chose the wrong Jane.

While first studying chimps in Tanzania in the early 1960s, Goodall was known for her unconventional approach. She didn’t simply observe them from afar but immersed herself in every aspect of their lives. She fed them and gave them names instead of numbers, something for which she received pushback from some scientists.

Her findings were circulated to millions when she first appeared on the cover of National Geographic in 1963 and soon after in a popular documentary. A collection of photos of Goodall in the field helped her and even some of the chimps become famous. One iconic image showed her crouching across from the infant chimpanzee named Flint. Each has arms outstretched, reaching for the other.

In 1972, the Sunday Times published an obituary for Flo, Flint’s mother and the dominant matriarch, after she was found face down on the edge of a stream. Flint died about three weeks later after showing signs of grief, eating little and losing weight.

″What the chimps have taught me over the years is they’re so like us. They’ve blurred the line between humans and animals,″ she told The Associated Press in 1997.

Goodall has earned top civilian honors from a number of countries including Britain, France, Japan and Tanzania. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2025 by then-U.S. President Joe Biden and won the prestigious Templeton Prize in 2021 

“Her groundbreaking discoveries have changed humanity’s understanding of its role in an interconnected world, and her advocacy has pointed to a greater purpose for our species in caring for life on this planet,” said the citation for the Templeton Prize, which honors individuals whose life’s work embodies a fusion of science and spirituality.

Goodall was also named a United Nations Messenger of Peace and published numerous books, including the bestselling autobiography “Reason for Hope.”

Born in London in 1934, Goodall said her fascination with animals began around when she learned to crawl. In her book, “In the Shadow of Man,” she described an early memory of hiding in a henhouse to see a chicken lay an egg. She was in there so long her mother reported her missing to the police.

She bought her first book — Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Tarzan of the Apes” — when she was 10 and soon made up her mind about her future: Live with wild animals in Africa.

That plan stayed with her through a secretarial course when she was 18 and two different jobs. And by 1957, she accepted an invitation to travel to a farm in Kenya owned by a friend’s parents.

It was there that she met the famed anthropologist and paleontologist Louis Leakey at a natural history museum in Nairobi, and he gave her a job as an assistant secretary.

Three years later, despite Goodall not having a college degree, Leakey asked if she would be interested in studying chimpanzees in what is now Tanzania. She told the AP in 1997 that he chose her “because he wanted an open mind.”

The beginning was filled with complications. British authorities insisted she have a companion, so she brought her mother at first. The chimps fled if she got within 500 yards (460 meters) of them. She also spent weeks sick from what she believes was malaria, without any drugs to combat it.

But she was eventually able to gain the animals’ trust. By the fall of 1960 she observed the chimpanzee named David Greybeard make a tool from twigs and use it to fish termites from a nest. It was previously believed that only humans made and used tools.

She also found that chimps have individual personalities and share humans’ emotions of pleasure, joy, sadness and fear. She documented bonds between mothers and infants, sibling rivalry and male dominance. In other words, she found that there was no sharp line between humans and the animal kingdom.

In later years, she discovered chimpanzees engage in a type of warfare, and in 1987 she and her staff observed a chimp “adopt” a 3-year-old orphan that wasn’t closely related.

Goodall received dozens of grants from the National Geographic Society during her field research tenure, starting in 1961.

In 1966, she earned a Ph.D. in ethology — becoming one of the few people admitted to University of Cambridge as a Ph.D. candidate without a college degree.

Her work moved into more global advocacy after she watched a disturbing film of experiments on laboratory animals at a conference in 1986.

″I knew I had to do something,″ she told the AP in 1997. ″It was payback time.″

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and halted her in-person events, she began podcasting from her childhood home in England. Through dozens of “Jane Goodall Hopecast” episodes, she broadcast her discussions with guests including U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, author Margaret Atwood and marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson.

“If one wants to reach people; If one wants to change attitudes, you have to reach the heart,” she said during her first episode. “You can reach the heart by telling stories, not by arguing with people’s intellects.”

In later years, she pushed back on more aggressive tactics by climate activists, saying they could backfire, and criticized “gloom and doom” messaging for causing young people to lose hope.

In the lead-up to 2024 elections, she co-founded “Vote for Nature,” an initiative encouraging people to pick candidates committed to protecting the natural world.

She also built a strong social media presence, posting to millions of followers about the need to end factory farming or offering tips on avoiding being paralyzed by the climate crisis.

Her advice: “Focus on the present and make choices today whose impact will build over time.”

Works

Books

1969 My Friends the Wild Chimpanzees Washington, DC: National Geographic Society

1971 Innocent Killers (with H. van Lawick). Boston: Houghton Mifflin; London: Collins

1971 In the Shadow of Man Boston: Houghton Mifflin; London: Collins. Published in 48 languages

1986 The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior Boston: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press. Published also in Japanese and Russian. R.R. Hawkins Award for the Outstanding Technical, Scientific or Medical book of 1986, to Bellknap Press of Harvard University Press, Boston. The Wildlife Society (USA) Award for "Outstanding Publication in Wildlife Ecology and Management"

1990 Through a Window: 30 years observing the Gombe chimpanzees London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson; Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Translated into more than 15 languages. 1991 Penguin edition, UK. American Library Association "Best" list among Nine Notable Books (Nonfiction) for 1991

1991 Visions of Caliban (co-authored with Dale Peterson, PhD). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. New York Times "Notable Book" for 1993. Library Journal "Best Sci-Tech Book" for 1993

1999 Brutal Kinship (with Michael Nichols). New York: Aperture Foundation

1999 Reason For Hope; A Spiritual Journey (with Phillip Berman). New York: Warner Books, Inc. Translated into Japanese and Portuguese

2000 40 Years At Gombe New York: Stewart, Tabori, and Chang

2000 Africa In My Blood (edited by Dale Peterson). New York: Houghton Mifflin Company

2001 Beyond Innocence: An Autobiography in Letters, the later years (edited by Dale Peterson). New York: Houghton Mifflin Company ISBN 0-618-12520-5

2002 The Ten Trusts: What We Must Do To Care for the Animals We Love (with Marc Bekoff). San Francisco: Harper San Francisco

2005 Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating New York: Warner Books, Inc. ISBN 0-446-53362-9

2009 Hope for Animals and Their World: How Endangered Species Are Being Rescued from the Brink Grand Central Publishing ISBN 0-446-58177-1

2013 Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder from the World of Plants (with Gail Hudson) Grand Central Publishing ISBN 1-4555-1322-9

2021 The Book of Hope, with Douglas Abrams and Gail Hudson, Viking[137]

Children's books

1972 Grub: The Bush Baby (with H. van Lawick). Boston: Houghton Mifflin

1988 My Life with the Chimpanzees New York: Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc. Translated into French, Japanese and Chinese. Parenting's Reading-Magic Award for "Outstanding Book for Children," 1989

1989 The Chimpanzee Family Book Saxonville: Picture Book Studio; Munich: Neugebauer Press; London: Picture Book Studio. Translated into more than 15 languages, including Japanese and Swahili. The UNICEF Award for the best children's book of 1989. Austrian state prize for best children's book of 1990.

1989 Jane Goodall's Animal World: Chimps New York: Macmillan

1989 Animal Family Series: Chimpanzee Family; Lion Family; Elephant Family; Zebra Family; Giraffe Family; Baboon Family; Hyena Family; Wildebeest Family Toronto: Madison Marketing Ltd

1994 With Love, New York / London: North-South Books. Translated into German, French, Italian, and Japanese

1999 Dr. White (illustrated by Julie Litty). New York: North-South Books

2000 The Eagle & the Wren (illustrated by Alexander Reichstein). New York: North-South Books

2001: Chimpanzees I Love: Saving Their World and Ours New York: Scholastic Press

2002 (Foreword) "Slowly, Slowly, Slowly," Said the Sloth by Eric Carle. Philomel Books

2004 Rickie and Henri: A True Story (with Alan Marks) Penguin Young Readers Group

Films

Goodall is the subject of more than 40 films:

 

1965 Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees National Geographic Society

1973 Jane Goodall and the World of Animal Behavior: The Wild Dogs of Africa with Hugo van Lawick

1975 Miss Goodall: The Hyena Story The World of Animal Behavior Series 16mm 1979 version for DiscoVision, not released for LaserDisc

1976 Lions of the Serengeti an episode of The World About Us on BBC2

1984: Among the Wild Chimpanzees National Geographic Special

1988 People of the Forest with Hugo van Lawick

1990 Chimpanzee Alert in the Nature Watch Series, Central Television

1990 The Life and Legend of Jane Goodall National Geographic Society.

1990 The Gombe Chimpanzees Bavarian Television

1995 Fifi's Boys for the Natural World series for the BBC

1996 Chimpanzee Diary for BBC2 Animal Zone

1997 Animal Minds for BBC

Goodall voiced herself in the animated TV series The Wild Thornberrys.

2000 Jane Goodall: Reason For Hope PBS special produced by KTCA

2001 "Chimps R Us, on season 11, episode 8". Scientific American Frontiers. Chedd-Angier Production Company. 2000–2001. PBS. Archived from the original on 1 January 2006.

2002 Jane Goodall's Wild Chimpanzees (IMAX format), in collaboration with Science North

2005 Jane Goodall's Return to Gombe for Animal Planet

2006 Chimps, So Like Us HBO film nominated for 1990 Academy Award

2007 When Animals Talk, We Should Listen theatrical documentary feature co-produced by Animal Planet

2010 Jane's Journey theatrical documentary feature co-produced by Animal Planet

2012 Chimpanzee theatrical nature documentary feature co-produced by Disneynature

2017 Jane biographical documentary film National Geographic Studios, in association with Public Road Productions. The film is directed and written by Brett Morgen, music by Philip Glass

Zayed's 2018 Antarctic Lights, Dr Jane featured in the Environment Agency-Abu Dhabi film that screened on National Geographic-Abu Dhabi and won a World Medal at the New York Film and TV Awards.

2019 Exploring Hans Hass Dr Jane Goodall featured in the biographical documentary film about the legendary diving pioneer and filmmaker Hans Hass

2020 Jane Goodall: The Hope, biographical documentary film, National Geographic Studios, produced by Lucky 8

2023 Jane Goodall: Reasons for Hope is an IMAX format documentary about successful projects to restore earth's wildlife habitat, animals, birds and envir