Jane Goodall.

Born Valerie Jane Morris Goodall on April 3, 1934, in London, England, she was raised in Bournemouth with a passion for animals, inspired by her childhood reads of Doctor Dolittle. After secretarial school, she worked at the Kenya National Museum in 1957, where director Louis Leakey changed her path.

Leakey, lacking funds for a conventional researcher, suggested Goodall study wild chimpanzees despite her lack of academic credentials. In 1960, accompanied by her mother, she arrived at Lake Tanganyika, now Gombe National Park, to begin the fieldwork that would define her career.

Goodall’s pioneering method of close observation revealed that chimpanzees make and use tools, a discovery that challenged the conventional definition of humanity. In 1965, she interrupted her research to earn a PhD from the University of Cambridge, an exemption granted without prior university study. Returning to Tanzania, she founded the Gombe Stream Research Center in 1967 with funding from the National Geographic Society.

Her 1971 book Wild Chimpanzees brought worldwide fame. From 1971 to 1975 she was a visiting professor at Stanford University. In 1977 she established the Jane Goodall Institute in the USA to ensure ongoing protection for Gombe’s chimpanzees. She retired from field research in 1987 and since then has been a full-time ambassador for chimpanzee conservation, lecturing globally on environmental issues.

Goodall married Dutch baron Hugo van Lawick in 1964, and their son Hugo Eric Louis van Lawick, nicknamed Grub, was born in 1967. Through this marriage she was styled Baroness van Lawick-Goodall. The couple divorced in 1974. In 1975 she married Derek Bryceson, a Tanzanian politician, who died in 1980. Later in life she returned to England, to her childhood home in Bournemouth.

Alongside Dian Fossey and Birute Galdikas, Goodall formed the Trimate — the three most prominent primate researchers. Her demonstration that chimpanzees share complex emotions, social bonds, and tool use redefined the scientific understanding of humans’ closest relatives. She was named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2003 and appointed a UN Messenger of Peace in 2002. In 2018 the documentary Jane by Brett Morgen introduced her story to new generations. She is remembered as the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and a tireless advocate for environmental stewardship.