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
