Born: April 3, 1934, London, England
Jane Goodall is a British ethologist and authority on wild chimpanzees. Born in London and educated in Bournemouth, Goodall worked in Africa for the British-Kenyan Louis S. B. Leakey, at whose suggestion she set up camp in 1960 in the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve on Lake Tanganyika. For nearly ten years she studied the rarely observed life of chimpanzees, discovering such behaviour patterns as their ability to use straws for extracting termites from nests. After writing her popular book on chimpanzees, In the Shadow of Man (1971), she wrote Innocent Killers (1971), about spotted hyenas, whose predatory behaviour had similarly been unresearched. Her ex-husband, the Dutch wildlife photographer Hugo van Lawick, collaborated with her on her books and films. In 1977, Goodall founded The Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education, and Conservation. She has established chimpanzees sanctuaries for the care and rehabilitation of orphaned chimpanzees in four African countries. In 1995, Goodall was awarded the National Geographic Society’s prestigious Hubbard Medal.
