British primatologist Jane Goodall, who spent 60 years studying chimpanzees, has died at the age of 91.
According to Live Science, the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) confirmed on October 1 that Jane Goodall, the world’s leading expert on chimpanzees, died of natural causes at the age of 91 in Los Angeles, California, during a speaking tour.
Dame Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall was born on April 3, 1934, in London, England. As a child, Goodall was particularly fond of animals and was fascinated by the African ecosystem. During a trip to Kenya in 1957, she met paleontologist Louis Leakey, who convinced Goodall that studying the behavior of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) could provide insights into human ancestors.
Goodall began studying chimpanzees in 1960 after visiting Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. She had no formal training at the time, but spent months quietly observing the chimps, giving them names like Fifi, Passion, and David Greybeard.
In 1966, Goodall left Gombe and earned her PhD from Cambridge University. In her doctoral thesis, she detailed her years of research at Gombe, including the important observation that chimpanzees were capable of making and using tools. Goodall once witnessed a chimpanzee stripping a stick to catch termites in a mound. The discovery of chimpanzee tool-making went against the prevailing assumption at the time that only humans were intelligent enough to use tools.
Goodall was the first to document chimpanzees hunting and eating meat, revealing them to be omnivores rather than vegetarians as scientists had previously thought. She also saw chimpanzees hugging each other in grief after the death of a troop member and developing primitive language systems. However, Goodall also discovered some disturbing behaviors that had never been seen before, such as dominant female chimpanzees killing the young of other members. “We discovered that chimpanzees can be brutal and have a dark side to their nature, similar to humans,” Goodall writes in her book, “Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey.”
In the 1970s, Goodall became increasingly concerned about conservation efforts in Gombe and across Africa. In 1977, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), a nonprofit organization based at the Gombe Stream Research Centre. It is the world’s longest-running chimpanzee research center and helps educate young people about environmental conservation.
Before her death, Goodall traveled the world nearly 300 days a year, speaking about wildlife conservation and the environmental crisis. In her public lectures, she often emphasized the collective power of individuals working for the benefit of the environment.
Goodall has an older sister, Judy Waters, and a son, Hugo Eric Louis van Lawick, known as Grub, as a young boy. Grub spent his childhood in Gombe, and observing chimpanzees helped Goodall understand how to raise a son.
During her 60 years working with primates and spreading the message of environmental conservation, Goodall inspired many other women to become scientists and received numerous awards, including the British Empire Medal (1995), the United Nations Messenger of Peace (2002), the French Legion of Honor (2006), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from US President Joe Biden in January 2025.
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