Groundbreaking animal scientist Jane Goodall dies at 91

The zoologist died from natural causes Wednesday morning, according to The Jane Goodall Institute. At the time of her death, she was in California while traveling for a speaking tour. Goodall was known for her research on chimpanzees in the 1960s, specifically observing their communication habits, social structures, and use of tools. She was a tireless advocate for protecting the natural world, and her ethological discoveries revolutionized science, the institute said.

Apart from that, who was she? Born in England in 1934, Goodall spent her childhood observing closely the natural world. She told the New York Times in a 2019 interview: “All my life, I’ve been outside in the garden waiting for eggs to hatch into baby birds and waiting until they've fledged and keeping very quiet so that the parent birds got used to me and would come in and feed the babies and I would watch the squirrels.”

She loved Tarzan, saving her pennies to buy a copy of the book. “And that was when my dream began. I will grow up, go to Africa, live with wild animals, and write books about them.” The war years were tough. Her parents divorced and the family went on strict food rations.

In 1957, a childhood friend invited Goodall to visit Kenya. While there, she met renowned anthropologist Louis Leakey, who hired her as a secretary and later encouraged her to study chimpanzees. He saw she had the temperament and personality to survive long periods of solitude.

Goodall had not gone to college and had no scientific credentials. But, in 1960, she set up in the Gombe Stream National Park, patiently winning the trust of chimpanzees and observing many of their previously unknown behaviors, including tool-using and meat-eating.

Again, Leakey intervened, this time to say that she must obtain a graduate degree if she wanted to be taken seriously as a scientist. Goodall received a Ph.D. from Cambridge in 1965.

With the 1971 publication of In the Shadow of Man, Goodall became a celebrity. She set up the Jane Goodall Institute to further her work and to help alleviate poverty in Africa, which forced humans to encroach on animal habitat. She received scientific honors and national recognition: In 2003, Queen Elizabeth II made her a Dame of the British Empire.

Goodall once called herself a mystic: “I don’t have any idea of who or what God is. But I do believe in some great spiritual power. I feel it particularly when I’m out in nature. It’s just something that’s bigger and stronger than what I am or what anybody is. I feel it. And it’s enough for me.”

How is the public responding to her death? The United Nations released a Wednesday statement mourning Goodall, who served as a UN Messenger of Peace. She worked tirelessly as a scientist and conservationist and left an extraordinary legacy for nature, the UN wrote. Goodall was one of the few people to earn a doctorate without having an undergraduate degree, Encyclopaedia Britannica wrote on Wednesday. Her lack of formal training allowed her to study chimps with an open mind without traditional thought biases, Britannica added.

Dig deeper: Listen to Paul Butler’s report on The World and Everything in It about Goodall’s work.