Who is Dame Valerie Jane Goodall?

What would cause someone to spend much of her life in the bush working for, studying and protecting chimpanzees? Surely most of us would see this as an unusually committed calling for a woman, even one who had developed a fascination with primates and with Africa.

But she is our hero precisely because she is so dogged in her pursuit of knowledge and because of her efforts to protect and study chimps in the wild. And she is our hero because she is unorthodox, stepping out of the box and using unusual methods to develop theories of chimp behavior and its relationship to human behavior.

She is and always will be the darling of animal lovers who have put her on a pedestal for her work, her dedication and her personal sacrifices for the good of the world.

What made him the Primatologist?

Thanks to multiple appearances in National Geographic magazine (the most for any one person) and several television documentaries, Jane Goodall is one of the most recognizable scientists in the world. Her research into the behavior of chimpanzees substantially changed the way people viewed the relationship between humans and primates.

Goodall was born on April 3,1934, in London, the first child of Mortimer Herbert Morriss-Goodall and the former Margaret Myfanwe Joseph. She has one younger sister, Judy. Her parents divorced when Goodall was only eight and the two sisters stayed with their mother, moving to the seaside city of Bournemouth, England, to live closer to the children’s maternal grandmother and two great aunts.

She quickly demonstrated a burning curiosity about the outdoors and the animals that inhabited her immediate area. Goodall devoured the Tarzan books by Edgar Rice Burroughs and told friends she would be a much better Jane to Tarzan than the character in the books. This fascination with the jungle led her to declare at age 11 that she intended to visit Africa and maybe even live there.

By the late 1950s, Goodall had achieved her dream to travel to Africa, but found her initial work as a secretary to be less than fulfilling. She heard that the famed anthropologist Louis Leakey and his wife, Mary, were digging near where she was residing in Zaire. As part of his fossil research linking humans to apes, Leakey had -been planning a major study of the great apes. After meeting Goodall, he hired her to be his secretary and was quickly impressed by her enthusiasm, love of the jungle and ability to absorb information and ideas.

Leakey wanted the person who began the study to bring a fresh, unbiased look at the subject. He asked Goodall to join the project and begin with a study of the chimpanzees in the Gombe National Reserve in Tanzania. The study was funded exclusively by Leakey, who thought the project would last for 10 years. Goodall believed it would take longer. More than 40 years later, she is still conducting research at Gombe.

Goodall had the work habits and instincts of a born naturalist, but she did not have the proper educational background. Leakey realized this would work against her research and sent her back to England where she earned a doctorate in ethology from the University of Cambridge in 1964.

She quickly returned to her work in Gombe, and while there met and married Dutch wildlife photographer Hugo van Lawick. The couple had one son and divorced amicably in 1974. The next year she married Tanzania parliament member Derek Bryceson (who was also a director of the country’s national parks). Bryceson died of cancer in 1980 after only 5 years of marriage to Goodall.

Goodall was frustrated in her initial attempts to get near to the chimpanzees; she was not allowed to get any closer than 50 feet. It did not help that she came down with two bouts of malaria in the course of only a few months.

She was finally accepted into a chimpanzee troop when a large male wandered into camp and started stomping his feet and screaming. Goodall realized he was interested in a banana on her camp table, and she quickly started using bananas to make contact with the chimpanzees. She also set up a banana-laden feeding station to lure the chimpanzees, but later believed this altered their natural behaviour.

Goodall soon had complete access to the chimpanzees at Gombe, who would let her follow them and greeted her, as they do with each other, with a touch or kiss. Unlike other wildlife researchers, she assigned her subjects names rather than code numbers.

After a few months, Goodall realized she was seeing behavior that had never been noted before, behavior that showed chimpanzees to be highly intelligent, emotional creatures living in complicated social groups. She also discovered that, despite popular beliefs, chimpanzees could use mildly complicated tools and would eat meat, making them omnivores and not vegetarians.

By now Goodall’s work was exciting enough to Leakey for him to continue funding the project and send additional supplies. She also attracted the attention of the National Geographic, which began chronicling her work in 1964. This would result in cover stories and a variety of television specials on her discoveries.

Goodall lived almost exclusively in her Gombe compound until 1975. She accumulated a wealth of data that is still being studied. She founded Jane Goodall Institutes in nine countries and lectures constantly on chimpanzee conservation and research, and on eliminating the use of chimpanzees in nonessential research.

The Legacy of Dame Valerie Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall will always be associated with bravery and honesty in research. When she made her first excursion to Gombe, many scientists questioned Louis Leakey’s judgment in sending a young woman into what could be a dangerous situation. She proved them wrong.

Goodall’s work has resulted in her being given numerous professional recognitions and awards. She was named a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2004. In 2002, Kofi Annan, the secretary-general of the United Nations, named her a United Nations Messenger of Peace. Other awards for Goodall include the Medal of Tanzania, Japan’s Kyoto Prize and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science. She is a member of the advisory board of BBC Wildlife magazines. In 2006, Goodall received the 60th Anniversary Medal of UNESCO and French Legion d’Honneur.

Her fame has resulted in several interesting, and sometimes controversial, appearances in pop culture. The Walt Disney Company honored her with a plaque on The Tree of Life at Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom theme park (along with a carving of her beloved David Greenberg, the first chimpanzee to approach her).

She appeared as herself in Nickelodeon’s animated The Wild Thornberrys series and is a character in Irregular Webcomic’s Steve andJerry series. In an episode of The Simpsons, she was spoofed as a diamond-hoarding slave driver of chimpanzees.

Perhaps her most bizarre association with popular culture was a Gary Larson The Far Side cartoon showing two chimpanzees grooming. One finds a human hair on the other and asks if her husband is “doing a little research with that Jane Goodall tramp.” The Jane Goodall Institute sent Larson a letter complaining about the cartoon, but these efforts were dropped when Goodall admitted how amused she was by it. After the controversy died down, the cartoon appeared on T-shirts, and all profits from sales of the shirts would benefit the Goodall Institute. Goodall maintained a cordial relationship with Larson and wrote a preface to his The Far Side Gallery 5 collection, praising his work and its depiction of the similarity of human and animal behavior.

Even though Goodall’s unorthodox methods resulted in criticism from the scientific community, her discoveries and courageous methods of research have opened a new understanding of how chimpanzees relate to each other and to humanity.

Courtesy

Jane Goodall has authored numerous books on her studies and findings among the chimpanzees of Gombe. Many of her television specials are available on DVD and videocassette. You can find out more about her and the Jane Goodall Institute at wwwJanegoodall.org.

Important books by and about Jane Goodall include Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey, Warner Books, 2000; My Life With the Chimpanzees, Aladdin, 1996; In the Shadow of Man, Mariner Books, 2000\ Africa in My Blood: An Autobiography in Letters: The Early Years, Mariner Books, 2001 Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man, Houghton Mifflin, 2006; and Jane Goodall: 40 Years at Gombe, Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1999.