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Jane Goodall (born 3rd April 1934), is a British primatologist, ethologist and anthropologist conducting a forty-year study of chimpanzee social and family life in Gombe Stream National Park in the African nation of Tanzania.
Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall was born in London, England, the first child of Mortimer Herbert Morris-Goodall and the former Margaret Myfanwe "Vanne" Joseph. Her sister, Judy, was born in 1938. After the divorce of their parents, Jane and Judy moved with their mother to Bournemouth, England, where Vanne's mother and two sisters lived in a home that had been in the Joseph family since around the turn of the century.
Jane's secretarial training and love of animals prompted noted anthropologist and curator of the Coryndon Museum (now the National Museums of Kenya) Louis S. B. Leakey to hire her as his secretery during her trip to Kenya in 1957/1958. It was through her association with Leakey that she began studying the chimpanzees of Gombe Stream National Park (then known as Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve) in July, 1960.
Goodall was instrumental in recognition of social learning, thinking, acting, and culture in wild chimps, their differentiation from the bonobo, and the inclusion of both species along with the gorilla as Hominids.
One of Goodall's biggest contributions to the field of primatology was the discovery of tool use in chimpanzees. She discovered that some chimpanzees poke twigs into termite holes. The termites would grab onto the stick with their mandibles and the chimpanzees would then just pull the stick out and eat the termites.
Goodall also flouted traditional scientific method in her study of primates by naming the animals she studied, instead of assigning each a number, a nearly universal practice at the time.
One of cartoonist Gary Larson's The Far Side cartoons shows two chimps grooming, one finding Jane Goodall's hair in the fur of the other. The Goodall institute complained that this was in bad taste; however an appeal to Jane Goodall herself revealed that she found the cartoon amusing; since then, all profits from sales of the t-shirt featuring this cartoon go to the Jane Goodall Institute. She has also appeared (cast as herself) in an episode of the Nickelodeon animated series The Wild Thornberrys entitled "The Trouble With Darwin".
Goodall has been married twice: first, in 1964, to wildlife photographer Hugo van Lawick; they divorced amicably in 1974. Their son, Hugo, known as Grub, was born in 1967. She was married to Derek Bryceson, a member of Tanzanias parliament and the director of that countrys national parks, in the mid-1970s until his death in 1980.
Jane is an advocate for great ape personhood, having served as a Goodwill Ambassador to the United Nations since 2002. She was named a Dame of the British Empire (DBE) in a ceremony held in Buckingham Palace in 2004.
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