Revered chimpanzee expert, scientist, animal rights advocate, famed primatologist Jane Goodall has died at the age of 91, the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) confirmed in a statement on Wednesday.
Goodall died of natural causes in Los Angeles, California, while on a speaking tour.
Goodall “was a remarkable example of courage and conviction, working tirelessly throughout her life to raise awareness about threats to wildlife, promote conservation, and inspire a more harmonious, sustainable relationship between people, animals and the natural world,” the JGI statement reads.
“Dr. Goodall’s discoveries as an ethologist revolutionized science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world,” it said.
Born on April 3, 1934, Dame Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall was fond of all animals as a child. Growing up in Bournemouth on England’s south coast, Goodall had dreamed of living among the wild animals. Her gift of being passionate about animals, she said, was stoked from a stuffed toy gorilla that her father gifted her.
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Reading books like ‘Tarzan’ and ‘Dr. Dolittle’ further fanned her dreams, which had to take a backseat when she couldn’t afford university. After spending some time working as a secretary and then for a film company, she took up a friend’s invitation to visit Kenya, arriving in the East African nation in 1957.
There, she met Dr. Louis Leakey, famed anthropologist and paleontologist, and his wife, Mary Leakey, who was an archaeologist, and embarked on a unique path to work with primates.
Under Leakey, she set up the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve, later renamed the Gombe Stream Research Centre, near Lake Tanganyika in present-day Tanzania. Here, she discovered what chimpanzees really ate, such as meat, and what they did, like fighting fierce wars.
"It isn't only human beings who have personality, who are capable of rational thought, emotions like joy and sorrow," Goodall said in a 1996 PBS documentary.
Goodall paused her research to earn a PhD at Cambridge University, her love for the jungle and its inhabitants never waned.
Her doctoral thesis detailed her years’ worth of study at Gombe, with one key observation laying the foundation to the understanding that humans weren’t the only intelligent species. Goodall wrote her observation of chimpanzees making and using tools – she famously saw one of the apes strip a stick to "fish" for termites in a mound.
She also saw chimps embrace one another in mourning after the death of a troop member and develop a kind of primitive language system.
She also documented disturbing behaviors never seen before, such as dominant females killing the young of other females.
"We found that chimpanzees can be brutal – that they, like us, had a darker side to their nature," Goodall wrote in her book "Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey" (Grand Central Publishing, 2000).
Through the National Geographic’s coverage, the chimpanzees at Gombe Stream soon became household names - most famously, one Goodall called David Greybeard for his silver streak of hair.
The urgency of the chimpanzees’ dying habitat brought Goodall to the world of animal conservation, which prompted the setting up of the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977.
Travelling an average of 300 days a year, she would meet local officials in countries, communities and school groups.
She later expanded her institute to include Roots & Shoots, a conservation programme aimed at children.
A prolific author, she published more than 30 books with her observations, including her 1999 bestseller Reason For Hope: A Spiritual Journey, as well as a dozen aimed at children.
She had one son, known as ‘Grub,’ with wildlife cameraman Hugo van Lawick. They were divorced in 1974. Van Lawick died in 2002.
In 1975, she married Derek Bryceson. He died in 1980.
Despite the challenges facing the planet and its inhabitants, Goodall never lost hope.
“Yes, there is hope… It’s in our hands, it’s in your hands and my hands and those of our children. It’s really up to us,” she said in 2002, urging people to “leave the lightest possible ecological footprints”.
Having spent 60 years working with primates and spreading the message of animal conservation, Goodall received numerous awards, including the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (1995), United Nations Messenger of Peace (2002), French Legion of Honour (2006), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which she was awarded in January 2025 by US President Joe Biden.
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