Jane Goodall, the world -famous primatologist, activist and environmentalist, whose discoveries about chimpanzees have changed forever, what it means to be human, died at 91.
The Jane Goodall Institute confirmed her death Instagram Wednesday, said the founder, died for natural reasons.
She had been in California, where she visited as part of a speech tour in the USA
“Dr. Goodall’s discoveries as an ethologer changed science and she was a tireless advocate of protection and restoring the natural world,” said the post office.
During her five decades among the chimpanzees in today’s Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, Goodall made groundbreaking observations that have not only changed as scientists understand the endangered primates, but how people understand their place in the world.
Even when this iconic chapter in her life ended in 1986, Goodall was a passionate activist. She spent the last part of her life traveling to the globe, speaking in front of the masses and meeting the leaders of the world in order to raise awareness of the devastating effects of climate change on the planet and all them – alike.
The Sunday magazine23:47In the middle of the climate and political instability, Jane Goodall keeps her hope for our planet alive
“Girls didn’t do that”
Goodall began her life work as a young woman without formal education in sciences, only with persistence, a deep affection for animals and a childhood dream to explore the wilderness in Africa.
In 1934 she was born in London as the son of businessman Mortimer Herbert Morris-Goodall and novelist Margaret Myfanwe Joseph.
She inherited her mother’s passion for the written word and read books as a child Doctor Dolittle and Tarzan. These stories opened her imagination and she swore that she lived in Africa and worked with animals.
“Everyone laughed apart from my amazing mother. I write back so much of what I did to your support. She would say:” If you really want to do it, you probably have to work really hard and take the opportunity and never give up ” An interview in April 2016 To The national.
The Second World War raged and the family had no money, said Goodall.
“Africa was far away and girls didn’t do that.”
Goodall was determined as a waitress and did strange jobs and secretarial work to save enough money around 1957 at the age of 23 to travel to the farm of a friend from childhood outside of Nairobi, Kenya.
There she met the paleontologist Louis Leakey, who used her as an assistant. Later he saw both her potential as a researcher and her passion for wild animals and offered her the opportunity to change her life forever.
She should watch chimpanzees in the wild.
The legendary primatologist and conservationist says that she was “born” loving animals, and – from childhood – her mother played a major role in who would have become.
A life of the advocacy
Goodall came on July 13, 1960 on the east coast of Lake Tanganyika with a tent, binoculars and – on the persistence of British authorities who said that a young woman should not be unaccompanied to the wilderness.
She discovered her first chimpanzees that evening, a grown man she called David Greybeard. Within four months after the following Greybeard and his companions, she made three main discoveries that shook the scientific community.
The first was that chimpanzee, who had long thought as a vegetarian, eat termites. In addition, they draw these termites with sticks from their nests, which means that they use tools. And above all, roam the leaves to get these sticks, which means that they make their tools.
Jane Goodall, the British conservationist and researcher, who is known for her work with chimpanzees, died of natural reasons at the age of 91.
The latter discovery according to information National GeographicContemporary thinking about mankind was upside down. Until then, it was generally assumed that the ability to create tools differentiates people from the animal kingdom. We often called ourselves “man, the toolmaker”.
When Goodall an Leake about what she had learned, he wrote, wrote back famous: “Now we have to ‘redefine the tool,’ redefine man ‘or accept chimpanzees as humans.”
Later, Goodall’s biographer Dale Peterson called her “the woman who redefines the man”.
Unconventional thinking
It wasn’t the last time goodall rattled the status quo.
After 15 months in this area, she took a short break from chimpanzees to collect her doctoral thesis in ethology, studying animal behavior, from Cambridge University.
Goodall stormed there with her professors who reject their methods in this area. The way Goodall wrote about the chimpanzees, which gave them names instead of numbers and attributed personality traits, was called anthropomorphism and flew in view of the scientific convention.
“It was a bit shocking that I did everything wrong,” said Goodall National Geographic 2010.
Nevertheless, she stayed with her beliefs and the lesson that she learned to spend time with her pet dog Rusty as a child: “You cannot share your life in a sensible way with some kind of animal with a reasonably well developed brain and do not recognize that animals have personalities.”
It was this philosophy that she would lead throughout her career.
Miss Goodall and the wild chimpanzees
Within a few years at Gombe in Tanzania, Goodall’s work started to achieve international attention, thanks to the television film from 1965 from 1965, last but not least Miss Goodall and the wild chimpanzees. She appeared in 83 films and television programs and wrote dozens of books.
Her fame helped her to transform her small field camp into the Gombe Stream Research Center, which has made 165,000 hours of data possible by observing more than 320 chimpanzees, which more than more than 430 academic papers and theses.
In 1977 she founded the Jane Goodall Institute, a global non -profit organization that aims to protect great monkeys and maintain its habitats. It has offices all over the world, including three in Canada.
After 50 years with Greybeard’s descendants, Goodall decided that it was time for a new chapter in her life. In 1986 she withdrew from field work and dedicated her life to the interests of interest.
Matt Galloway from CBC talks to the famous anthropologist Jane Goodall about why there is still time to save the planet, the effects of war on the environment and like Sudbury, Ontara, an example of how changes can happen.
At the height of her philanthropic career, it was said that she had traveled 300 days a year, spoke at events, collected money and meet with government figures to get close to her heart for the Jane Goodall Institute and other causes.
In 2002 it was appointed the Peace District of the United Nations by the then Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Her brand of advocacy focused not only on conservation efforts, but also on the reduction of poverty and strengthening girls and women – topics that she considered to be connected to each other.
“How could we even try to save the chimpanzees when people had difficulty survival?” Goodall said that Huffington Post in 2011.
Her project Tanganyika-Entry area and Education, launched in 1994, helps people who live near the great African lakes through microfinance, education and health initiatives, a large part of them on women and girls.
Goodall often spoke about how proud of the youth program of the institute, Roots & Shoots was what encouraged young people to identify challenges in their communities and to develop solutions. It started with about a dozen students in Tanzania and has since spread to 130 countries, including Canada.
“His main message is that each of us plays a role every day and makes a difference,” said Goodall in this last CBC interview about Mesley. “I think it’s so successful because we don’t tell you what to do, except a project that makes the world better for people, for animals, for the environment we all share.”
Before he left office in January in January, the then US President Joe Biden Goodall received the presidential medal of freedom, the highest civilian honor of the nation.
Goodall leaves her son Hugo Eric Louis van Lawick, better known as the Grub, from her first marriage with National Geographic The filmmaker Hugo van Lawick and three grandchildren.
Her second husband, Derek Bryceson, member of the Tanzanian parliament and former director of the National Parks of Tanzania, died of cancer in 1980.
During a 2008 Ted talkGoodall attributed their grandchildren to the inspiring power behind their activism.
“Every time I look at her and I think how we have injured this beautiful planet since my age, I feel this despair,” she said.
“We take care of the planet for our children? How many of us have children or grandchildren, nieces, nephew? Do we take care of their future? And if we take care of their future, we can do something about it as an elite around the world.”
