Jane Goodall, who helped her lifelong work as a primate to broaden the world’s understanding of animals’ behavior and emotions, said she died Wednesday. She was 91 years old.
Her field studies with chimpanzees not only broke barriers for women and changed the way scientists study animals, but also documented the emotional and personality traits within these primates that blurred the line between humans and animal kingdoms.
According to her lab, she died of natural causes in California.
“Dr. Goodall’s discoveries as an ethologist revolutionized science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world,” the institute said in a social media statement.
Goodall was appointed Dame of the British Empire in 2004 and was awarded the Medal of Freedom of the President of the United States in 2025. He was also appointed by the United Nations in 2002 as a Messenger of Peace.
Goodall said he “hadid efforts for our planet and all of its inhabitants, leaving behind an extraordinary legacy for humanity and nature,” and the United Nations mourned her death.
Goodall arrived at Gombestream Chimpanzee Reserve in Tanzania in 1960 and was asked by his superior, renowned anthropologist and paleontologist Dr. Louis Leakey. There, the 26-year-old, long fascinated by Africa and its animals, but not under any formal higher education, began a groundbreaking job observing and studying these intellectual primates in their natural habitats.
At first, the chimpanzee ran away from her.
“They probably never saw a white ape before,” Goodall told Deepak Chopra in 2019.
That all changed when she met an older chimpanzee named David Greybeard. After chasing David through the woods, she offered him palm nuts.
“He took the nuts and dropped them, but squeezed my fingers very gently,” recalls Goodall. “That’s how chimpanzees can reassure each other.
“So, at that moment we communicated in a way that must have preceded human language.”
Goodall, who lives among Gombe’s chimpanzees, discovers that chimpanzees ate meat and made them as well as the tools they used.
“I saw a chimpanzee set out for termite mounds, picking small, lush twigs and peeling off the leaves,” Goodall said in the 2017 documentary “Jane.” The chimpanzee thrusts the peeled twigs into the mound and easily collected and ate the termite clumps.
Jane Goodall’s life
“It was an object change and a crude start to create tools. I’ve never seen it before.”
The young British, who had a PhD in animal behavior despite not having a bachelor’s degree, spent months with local chimpanzee populations, rather than studying by arm length. She learned to name them and read their feelings.
“When I first started studying chimpanzees, no one could tell me how I would do it,” Goodall recalled. “In 1960, the world knew nothing about wild chimpanzees.”
Goodall’s discoveries and her methodology have caused quite a stir within academic and scientific circles. Raw the forest and studied chimpanzees she named instead of giving a number, documenting their personalities and feelings. She was said to have made a mistake in the entire study, but Goodall stuck to her beliefs.
“My observations at Gombe will challenge human identity,” Goodall said. “I was a young, untrained girl and there were people who tried to trust my observations because I should have been ignored.”
Goodall was one of three women chosen by Leakey to study primates in their natural habitats as part of an effort to better understand human evolution. While Goodall focused on chimpanzees, Dian Fossey studied gorillas, and Virut Gardikas studied orangutans. They were sometimes called “Leakey’s Angels” – a nod to the 1970s television hit series “Charlie’s Angels.”
The world learned about Goodall and her work in 1963 after her first article appeared in National Geographic, entitled “My Life Among Wild Chimpanzees.”
Leakey secured a grant from the National Geographic Association for Goodall and continued her work, and in 1962 National Geographic sent filmmaker Baron Hugo Van Rooke to Gombe to document Jane’s work with chimpanzees. The two fell in love, married in 1964 and had a son three years later.
Goodall received his PhD in Ethiology, a study of animal behavior from the University of Cambridge in 1965. That same year, she and Van Loick founded the Gombestream Research Center.
To this day, Gombe’s small forest on the shores of Lake Tanganyika has the longest and most detailed study of animals in natural habitats anywhere in the world.
Born in London, Goodall says he was fascinated by the animal’s behavior when his mother took her to visit a rural farm when she was four and a half years old.
“It was really exciting. I remember meeting cows, pigs and sheep face to face,” Goodall recalled in 2019 on Chopra’s Infinite Potential Podcast.
On the farm, she wandered into an empty hen coop, patiently waiting to observe the egg-laying hens.
“Mama was desperately searching for me. No one knew where I was.
“You can imagine how worried she is, but when… she saw my shining eyes (she) sit down and hear a great story about how a hen lays eggs.”
She believed that she had the support of her mother in that moment, and that she paved the way for her career later in life.
“Another kind of mother might have crushed that scientific curiosity, and I might not have done what I did.”
Goodall spends much of her childhood outside and reads as “in her private world… obsessed with life in the forest with Tarzan.”
That’s when she decided to live with animals, write about them and go to Africa.
She never wavered from her dreams, and as a young woman, she worked and traveled to Africa to “save every penny I could.”
“Everyone laughed at me because I was just a girl, we were money (and) World War II was not infuriated,” she recalled.
She was always encouraged by her mother and said, “Work hard, take advantage of the opportunity, but more than anything, I will not give up.”
Jane Goodall’s original mission at Gombe was to learn everything possible about chimpanzees (the closest living relatives of humans) in the hope that their actions might “provide a window into our past.”
“I’m always amazed at how similar we are to chimpanzees, and we also share feelings of fear, pain and anger about other animals,” Goodall said.
“Chimpanzees learn by observing…but (humans) can discuss the past in words and tell stories about it, and perhaps they can use it.
And she said that the ability to communicate verbally gives humans a unique responsibility to maintain the planet.
“Is it strange that the most intelligent creatures walking along the planet are destroying its only home? I see a disconnect between this very intelligent mind and the human heart – love and compassion.”
Goodall began focusing his efforts on environmental conservation after attending a conference on African conservation in 1986.
“It was shocking to see immediately across Africa that the forests had disappeared wherever chimpanzees were being studied,” she said.
“That was when I realized that the role I had to play was to make sure the next generation was better than us, and I had to bring that message to the world.”
“I went to a meeting as a scientist. I left as an activist.”
Today, the Jane Goodall Institute, which she founded in 1977, devotes most of its wildlife conservation efforts and works closely with the surrounding communities of Gombe National Park to promote human outlook and protect natural treasures.
In 2017, the institute partnered with Google Earth to closely monitor the park and its chimpanzees using cutting-edge satellite technology.
Goodall showed no signs of slowing down in the 80s, traveled about 300 days a year to meet world leaders on climate change, visited conservation projects, supporting her roots and filming youth environment program.
The Covid-19 outbreak stopped travel in 2020, but Goodall continued to effectively spread her message, speaking about her thoughts on what led to the climate change and the coronavirus pandemic.
“It unleashed the fear and misery of a new virus when we used them for entertainment,” she told Anderson Cooperfull Circle.
When asked what she thought her legacy should be, Goodall told CNN’s Becky Anderson that it “is to give young people hope and… a sense of empowerment.”
CNN’s Thomas Page and Olivia Yasukawa contributed to this report
