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Born in 1934 in London, Goodall grew up in middle-class Bournemouth and said that as a young girl the idea of her becoming a scientist was almost unthinkable.<\/p>\n
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\u2018There was no thought of becoming a scientist because girls weren\u2019t scientists in those days. And actually there weren\u2019t really any men going out there living in the wild.\u2019<\/p>\n
So Goodall drew her inspiration from fiction and she developed two great passions: animals and Africa.<\/p>\n
Goodall also credited her mother, novelist Margaret Myfanwe Joseph, with encouraging her to pursue a career in the male-dominated field of primatology.<\/p>\n
\u2018I got my love of animals from the Dr Dolittle books and my love of Africa from the Tarzan novels,\u2019 she said 2019. \u2018I remember my mum taking me to the first Tarzan film and bursting into tears.\u2019<\/p>\n
Dr Goodall was just 26-years-old when she travelled to what is now Tanzania with little more than a notebook and a pair of binoculars.<\/p>\n
Goodall set out to meet the creatures she loved and this began 60 years of ground-breaking work to save them from extinction.<\/p>\n
Going on to be a full-time primatologist and anthropologist she is considered one of the world\u2019s leading experts on chimpanzees.<\/p>\n
Goodall\u2019s early love of primates developed after her father gave her a toy chimpanzee named Jubilee as a young girl instead of a teddy bear.<\/p>\n Goodall went to Uplands School, an independent school in Poole. She left in 1952 but couldn\u2019t afford to go to university, so she worked as a secretary at Oxford University for a few years.<\/p>\n In May 1956, her friend Clo Mange invited Goodall to her family\u2019s farm in the Kenyan highlights. Mange encouraged her to contact Louis Leaky, the notable archaeologist and palaeontologist and she began working as his secretary at age 23.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Goodall went to Gombe National Park in 1960 to study chimpanzees, while Leakey chose two other female researchers, Dian Fossey and Birute Galdikas, to study gorillas and orangutans.<\/p>\n The three became known as The Trimates or Leakey\u2019s Angels. At Gombe, Jane withstood all manner of natural threats: malaria, parasites, snakes, storms.<\/p>\n In 1962 Leakey arranged funding for Goodall to go to Cambridge University to study for a PhD.\u00a0She was only the eighth person in history to attend the university without a previous qualification, and in 2020 she said this was her proudest achievement.<\/p>\n Leakey thought that Goodall would make a perfect researcher \u2018with a mind uncluttered and unbiased by theory\u2019.<\/p>\n This unorthodox approach to primatology became the key to her success. Instead of numbering the chimpanzees she studied, she gave them affectionate names such as Fifi and David Greybeard.<\/p>\n She noticed their unique and individual personalities, an unconventional idea at the time, finding that \u2018it isn\u2019t only human beings who have personality, who are capable of rational thought and emotions like joy and sorrow\u2019.<\/p>\n She also observed behaviour such as hugs, kisses and even tickling. Her work held up a mirror to our own species, suggesting many human behaviours, once thought to be unique, may have been inherited from our ancestors.<\/p>\n Setting herself apart from other researchers also led her to develop a close bond with the chimpanzees and to become, to this day, the only human ever accepted into chimpanzee society.<\/p>\n In one instance she observed a chimpanzee named David Greybeard make a tool from twigs and use it to fish termites from a nest, a ground-breaking observation that challenged the definition of humans as the single species capable of making tools.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dr Goodall was also awarded a damehood in 2004, and was invested by the then-Prince of Wales, now King, at Buckingham Palace.<\/p>\n The primatologist said, however, that her most prized distinction was becoming the UN Messenger of Peace in 2002.<\/p>\n A post to the official X account of the UN said: \u2018Today, the UN family mourns the loss of Dr Jane Goodall.<\/p>\n \u2018The scientist, conservationist and UN Messenger of Peace worked tirelessly for our planet and all its inhabitants, leaving an extraordinary legacy for humanity and nature.\u2019<\/p>\n Maria Shriver, the former first lady of California, described Dr Goodall as\u00a0\u2018a legendary figure and a friend\u2019 in a post to X.<\/p>\n She added: \u2018I admired her, learned from her, and was so honoured to get to spend time with her over the years.<\/p>\n \u2018She stayed at her mission and on her mission. She changed the world and the lives of everyone she impacted. The world lost one of its best today, and I lost someone I adored.\u2019<\/p>\n Dame Jane also founded her Roots and Shoots global leadership programme to inspire young people to change their communities, environment and local wildlife for the better.<\/p>\n Established in 1991 with just 12 Tanzanian high school students, the initiative involves young people in more than 60 countries.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The British primatologist took to the Greenpeace stage at Glastonbury Festival in 2024 and spoke about the planet, loss of biodiversity and climate change in a speech where she also acknowledged that \u2018young people are still losing hope\u2019.<\/p>\n She was due to speak at Royce Hall, a building on the campus of the University of California, on Friday October 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The legendary conservationist died of natural causes while staying in California, the Jane Goodall Institute confirmed in a post on Facebook on Wednesday. The Sussexes called her a \u2018visionary humanitarian\u2019 who was a...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6452,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n![](\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2025\/10\/02\/10\/102620079-15154037-Primatologist_Jane_Goodall_has_died_of_natural_causes_at_the_age-a-57_1759395980434.jpg\")
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