Primatologist Jane Goodall dies at 91

Jane Goodall in Tanzania in 1965

(Image credit: CBS via Getty Images)

What happened

Jane Goodall, the conservationist and primatologist who rose to international fame for her groundbreaking field research with chimpanzees in Tanzania, died in her sleep Wednesday in Los Angeles while on a speaking tour. She was 91.

Who said what

Goodall was 26 and had no formal scientific training when she started studying a group of chimpanzees at a primitive research station on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, under an arrangement with her mentor, paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey. Within months, in the fall of 1960, she observed a male chimp fashioning twigs into an instrument to fish termites from a nest. Her revelation that primates used tools, a talent “considered uniquely human” at the time, “rocked the research world,” The Wall Street Journal said.

Goodall’s observations, detailed in magazines and documentaries, “transformed how the world perceived not only humans’ closest living biological relatives but also the emotional and social complexity of all animals,” The Associated Press said. Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould called her discoveries about how chimpanzees raise their young, go to war, organize socially and experience human-like emotions “one of the Western world’s great scientific achievements.”

What next?

The Jane Goodall Institute, which she founded in 1977, will continue her conservation work and research. “Jane would be the first person to tell us that what the world needs right now is not sadness over her loss, but to get to work,” University of St. Andrews primatologist Cat Hobaiter told the BBC. “We all have a lot to be getting on with to make sure that we are not the last generation to live alongside wild chimpanzees.”

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.