Dame Jane Morris Goodall
Personal Information
Born: 1934
Died: 2025
Country of Birth: UK
Nationality: British
Ethnicity: White
Education
Darwin College, Cambridge PhD Ethology 1965; Queens Secretarial School 1954
""When, in the early 1960s, I brazenly used such words as 'childhood', 'adolescence', 'motivation', 'excitement', and 'mood' I was much criticised. Even worse was my crime of suggesting that chimpanzees had 'personalities'. I was ascribing human characteristics to nonhuman animals and was thus guilty of that worst of ethological sins—anthropomorphism."(Wikipedia); writes that farm animals are "far more aware and intelligent than we ever imagined and, despite having been bred as domestic slaves, they are individual beings in their own right. As such, they deserve our respect. And our help. Who will plead for them if we are silent?"[54] Goodall has also said: "Thousands of people who say they 'love' animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been treated with so little respect and kindness just to make more meat." (Wikipedia); "I have for decades been concerned about factory farming, in part because of the tremendous harm inflicted on the environment, but also because of the shocking ongoing cruelty perpetuated on millions of sentient beings." (Wikipedia); "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."(Wikipedia); "By and large," she has written, "students are taught that it is ethically acceptable to perpetrate, in the name of science, what, from the point of view of animals, would certainly qualify as torture." (biography.com); "The more we learn of the true nature of nonhuman animals, especially those with complex brains and corresponding complex social behavior, the more ethical concerns are raised regarding their use in the service of man—whether this be in entertainment, as 'pets,' for food, in research laboratories or any of the other uses to which we subject them," she wrote. "This concern is sharpened when the usage in question leads to intense physical or mental suffering—as is so often true with regard to vivisection." (biography.com); "Chimpanzees ... have been living for hundreds of thousands of years in their forest ... never overpopulating, never destroying the forest. I would say that they have been in a way more successful than us as far as being in harmony with the environment." (biography.com); "The greatest danger to our future is apathy." (biography.com); "One of my earliest recollections is of the day that I hid in a small stuffy henhouse in order to see how a hen laid an egg. I emerged after about five hours. The whole household had apparently been searching for me for hours, and mother had even rung the police to report me missing." (biography.com); "I wore the same-coloured clothes every day and I think the most important thing was I never pushed it," she told BBC's Witness History in 2014. "I never tried to get too close. I would wait by a fruiting tree, where I knew the chimpanzees were coming, and when they left, I didn't follow them. Not to start with, because I felt that was pushing my luck. So gradually they came to accept that I was harmless." (bbc.com); "
— Dame Jane Morris Goodall
Professional Life
Field of Study: primatologist, zoologist, ethologist, & anthropologist
Institution/Corporation: Stanford University; University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania; Jane Goodall Institute; Roots & Shoots; National Geographic;
Degrees & Memberships: Honorary Degree: Approximately 40 including Open University of Tanzania (2006); Uppsala University (2007); University of Toronto (2008); University of Liverpool (2007); Member: Board of the Nonhuman Rights Project (2022); honorary member of the World Future Council; advisory council Save the Chimps in Fort Pierce, Florida; advisory board member for The Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN); advisory board of BBC Wildlife magazine; American Academy of Arts and Sciences; American Philosophical Society;
Awards & Achievements
Awards: 1990 Kyoto Prize; 1995 Hubbard Medal; 1997 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement; 2004 Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire; 2021 Templeton Prize; 2025 Presidential Medal of Freedom; 2002 named a United Nations Messenger of Peace; French Legion of Honor; Medal of Tanzania; Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science; the Gandhi-King Award for Nonviolence; the Spanish Prince of Asturias Awards; 2019 one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, Time Magazine; 2021 Templeton Prize; 2022 Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication; 2023 was made Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau; 1974 Gold Medal of Conservation, San Diego Zoological Society; 1984 J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize; 1987 Schweitzer Medal, Animal Welfare Institute; 1988 Centennial Award, National Geographic Society; 1980 Order of the Golden Ark, World Wildlife Award for Conservation; 1985 Living Legacy Award, International Women's League; 1989 Anthropologist of the Year Award; 1990 AMES Award; 1991 Edinburgh Medal; 1993 Rainforest Alliance Champion Award; 1994 Chester Zoo Diamond Jubilee Medal
Achievements: world's foremost expert on chimpanzees; discovered chimps make & use tools; 1960 discovered chimps are omnivorous; did chimp mother-infant study; discovered animals display complex social behavior such as altruism, affection & ritualized behavior; founder of the Jane Goodall Institute in California (1977) and the Roots & Shoots (1991) its youth program; discovered that chimpanzees will systematically hunt and eat smaller primates such as colobus monkeys; 1992 founded the Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Centre in the Republic of Congo to care for chimpanzees orphaned due to bush-meat trade; 1994 founded the Lake Tanganyika Catchment Reforestation and Education (TACARE or "Take Care") pilot project to protect chimpanzees' habitat from deforestation by reforesting hills around Gombe while simultaneously educating neighboring communities on sustainability and agriculture training; TACARE project also supports young girls by offering them access to reproductive health education and through scholarships to finance their college tuition; in the mid-1990s, the Jane Goodall Institute's Center for Primate Studies was created at the University of Minnesota to house and organize the data she had collected over the years-in 2011 plans were made to transfer the data to Duke University; 2018 and 2020 she partnered with friend and CEO Michael Cammarata on two natural product lines from Schmidt's Naturals and Neptune Wellness Solutions with five percent of every sale benefited the Jane Goodall Institute; collaborated with NASA to use satellite imagery from the Landsat series to remedy the effects of deforestation on chimpanzees and local communities in Western Africa by offering the villagers information on how to reduce activity and preserve their environment; with Professor Mark Bekoff, founded the organization Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in 2000; noted that chimpanzees throw stones as weapons, use touch and embraces to comfort one another and develop long-term familial bonds; observed that chimpanzees have a primitive "language" system containing more than 20 individual sounds; is also an accomplished photographer, and has published several books of her photographs;
born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall & formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall
first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania to observe its chimpanzees in 1960
as a child her father gave her a stuffed chimpanzee she named Jubillee as an alternative to a teddy bear & it sparked her interest in primates-it still sits on her dresser
began working with Louis Leakey in 1957 & he sent her to study primates in London 1958
was the eighth person to be allowed to study for a PhD at Cambridge without first having obtained a bachelor's degree
set herself apart from convention by naming the animals in her studies of primates instead of assigning each a number
is the only human ever accepted into chimpanzee society & was the lowest-ranking member of a troop for a period of 22 months
as of 2004 was travelling nearly 300 days a year
is the former president of Advocates for Animals
is a vegetarian
is an outspoken environmental advocate, speaking on the effects of climate change on endangered species such as chimpanzees
is a critic of fox hunting
as a young woman took night classes in Theosophy
has stated that dogs are her favorite animal
has prosopagnosia, which makes it difficult to recognize familiar faces
1988 when cartoonist Gary Larson visited Goodall's research facility in Tanzania he was attacked by a chimpanzee named Frodo, the same chimpanzee who exiled Goodall from his troop when he became alpha
2022 The Lego Group issued set number 40530, A Jane Goodall Tribute, depicting a Jane Goodall minifigure and three chimpanzees in an African forest scene
Stevie Nicks' song "Jane", written in 1990, celebrates Goodall's life and work
is honoured by The Walt Disney Company with a plaque on the Tree of Life at Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park, alongside a carving of her beloved David Greybeard, the original chimpanzee that approached Goodall during her first year at Gombe
has written 28 books with 12 of them for children; is the subject of over 40 movies
mostly went barefoot when conducting her research
her mother, Margaret Myfanwe Joseph, wrote novels under the name Vanne Morris Goodall
in Africa she spent 2 years visiting a troop of chimpanzees & observing them, imitating them, eating their food & spending time in the trees with them before they would come within 30 feet of her
the general public was introduced to her life work via "Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees" a documentary first broadcast on American television on December 22, 1965 it was filmed by her first husband and narrated by Orson Welles
held a visiting professorship in psychiatry at Stanford University from 1970 to 1975, and in 1973, was appointed to her longtime position of honorary visiting professor of zoology at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania
1960 Tanzanian officials would not allow her to go to the Gombe Stream Game Reserve on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika without an escort so she took her mother & a cook named Dominic
was at odds with her colleagues because she named the chimpanzees rather than just assigning them numbers
celebrated paleoanthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey was her mentor, hired her as his personal secretary at the local natural history museum & subsequently got her into Oxford for her PhD
Leakey saw her lack of formal training as an advantage in studying chimpanzees, as she would presumably be more open-minded and less bound to traditional scientific wisdom about primate behavior
credits her observations of chimpanzees with making her a better mother, and with being a mother for helping her better understand chimpanzees
her only child-a son named Hugo-was nicknamed Grub & as a small child was kept in a "caged lanai" to protect him while he accompanied his mother during her chimpanzee observations
Dian Fossey spent a brief time with Goodall to study her methods
her father, Mortimer Morris-Goodall, was a well-known race car driver.
she documented a four-year war between two bands of chimps, marked by extreme savagery and acts of cannibalism