The famous researcher Jane Goodall, a pioneer in the in -depth study of chimpanzees and defender of wildlife, died.
The scientist and the global activist Jane Goodall, who transformed his childhood love for primates into a life-protecting mission, died on Wednesday, at the age of 91, the institute he founded, reports News.ro citing Reuters.
The researcher “died of natural causes”, in California, the Jane Goodall Institute announced in a post on social networks.
“The discoveries made by Dr. Goodall as an ethologist revolutionized science, and she was a tireless supporter of protecting and restoring our natural world,” the statement said.
The primatologist became a surveyer has transformed his love for wildlife into a life campaign that led it from an English village on the seafront to Africa and then throughout the world, in search of a better understanding of the chimpanzees, as well as the role that people play in protecting their habitat and health.
Goodall was a pioneer in his field, both as a scientist in the 1960s and for her work to study the behavior of primates. She created a way that a number of other women followed, including regretted Dian Fossey.
She also attracted the public to the wild world, collaborating with the National Geographic Society to bring her loved ones to their lives through movies, television and magazines.
The one who gave the chimpanze names
She overturned the scientific norms of the time, giving the chimpanzees instead of numbers, observing their distinct personalities and incorporating their family relationships and their emotions in her work. He also found that, like humans, they use tools.
“I discovered that, in the end, there is no clear line to separate people from the rest of the animal kingdom,” she said in a 2002 TED conference.
As her career has evolved, she has moved her attention from primatology to climatic activism, after being witnessing the large-scale devastation of habitat, urging the world to take rapid and urgent measures against climatic changes.
“We forget that we are part of the natural world,” she told CNN in 2020. “We still have a time window,” she pleaded.
In 2003, the “ladies” of the British Empire was ennobled, and in 2025 he received the presidential medal of Freedom in the US.
A passion from childhood
Born in London in 1934 and raised in Bournemouth, on the southern coast of England, Goodall had long dreamed of living among wild animals. She said that her passion for animals, fueled by the gift received from her father, a gorilla -shaped plush toy, has grown as she plunged into books such as “Tarzan” and “Dr. Dolittle”.
He put his dreams aside after finishing school, not being able to go to university. She worked as a secretary and then for a movie company, until the invitation of a friend to visit Kenya brought her the jungle – and her inhabitants – close.
After raising money for a water trip, Goodall arrived in the country of East Africa in 1957. There a meeting with the renowned anthropologist and paleontologist Dr. Louis Leakey and his wife, archaeologist Mary Leakey, caused her to dedicate to the study of primates.
“Let us redefine the tools, redefine man or accept chimpanzees as people”
Under the guidance of Leakey, Goodall set up the Gombe Stream chimpanzees, later renamed the Gombe Stream Research Center, near Lake Tanganyika, in the current Tanzanie. There he discovered that the chimpanzees were eating meat, carrying fierce wars, and perhaps most importantly, made tools to eat termites.
“Now we have to redefine the tools, redefine the man or accept chimpanzees as people,” Leaky said about discovery.
Although he finally interrupted his research to get a doctorate at Cambridge University, Goodall has been left for years. Her first husband and collaborator was the Hugo Van Lawick wild cameraman.
Through national geographic reports, Gombe Stream chimpanzees have quickly become known names-the most famous being one that Goodall called David Graybeard (David Barbă-de-silver) due to his silver hair.
A new global role
However, almost thirty years after his first arrival in Africa, Goodall said he could not support or protect the chimpanzees without addressing the problem of disappearing their habitat. She said that she realized that she would have to look beyond the Gomb, to leave the jungle and to take on a more important global role as an ecological.
In 1977, he founded the Jane Goodall Institute, a non-profit organization that aims to support the research in the Gomb, as well as the efforts of conservation and development throughout Africa. Since then, his activity has expanded worldwide and includes efforts to approach ecological education, health and advocacy.
He has created a new reputation, traveling on average 300 days a year to meet with local officials from countries around the world and to discuss with communities and school groups. She continued her world tournaments until the age of 90.
Later, she expanded the institute to include Roots & Shoots, a conservation program for children. It was a radical change to his isolated research, when he spent whole days observing the chimpanzees.
Traveler up to 90
“He does not cease to amaze me that this person who travels and does all these things,” she told the New York Times during a trip in 2014 in Burundi and back to Gombe. “And that person is me. It doesn't seem to be me at all,” she confessed.
Author prolific, he has published over 30 books with his observations, including the 1999 bestseller “Reason for Hope: a Spiritual Journey” (a reason for hope: a spiritual journey), as well as a dozen for children.
Goodall said he never doubted the resilience of the planet or the human ability to overcome the environmental challenges. “Yes, there is hope … it is in our hands, it is in your hands and in my hands and in the hands of our children. It really depends on us,” she said in 2002, urging people to “leave ecological fingerprints.”
He has a son, known as “Grub”, with Van Lawick, who divorced in 1974. Van Lawick died in 2002.
In 1975, Goodall married Derek Bryceson. He died in 1980.
