Jane Goodall, Whose Studies of Chimps Revealed a Lot About Humans, Dies

And in 2020, she told AARP that she thought societal views of older adults were changing for the better.

Goodall with one of her research subjects in the Gombe National Park in northern Tanzania. Her work with chimps showed that they used tools, a finding that upended much of the research about the primates.

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

“I think we’re moving back toward the indigenous way of thinking of older people as the elders, and valuing information that has been gathered over all the years,” she said. “At least those people who think about it and take it in — what we would call wisdom.”

Living among the chimpanzees

While first studying chimps in Tanzania in the early 1960s, Goodall was known for her unconventional approach. She didn’t simply observe them from afar but immersed herself in every aspect of their lives. She fed them and gave them names instead of numbers, which some scientists criticized.

Her findings were circulated to millions when she first appeared on the cover of National Geographic in 1963 and soon after in a popular documentary. A collection of photos of Goodall in the field helped her and even some of the chimps become famous. One iconic image showed her crouching across from the infant chimpanzee named Flint. Each has arms outstretched, reaching for the other.

In 1972, the Sunday Times published an obituary for Flo, Flint’s mother and the dominant matriarch, after she was found face down on the edge of a stream. Flint died soon after showing signs of grief and losing weight.

″What the chimps have taught me over the years is they’re so like us. They’ve blurred the line between humans and animals,″ she said in 1997.

Goodall earned top civilian honors from a number of countries including Britain, France, Japan and Tanzania. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2025 by then-U.S. President Joe Biden and won the prestigious Templeton Prize in 2021.

“Her groundbreaking discoveries have changed humanity’s understanding of its role in an interconnected world, and her advocacy has pointed to a greater purpose for our species in caring for life on this planet,” said the Templeton Prize citation, which honors individuals whose life’s work embodies a fusion of science and spirituality.

Charting a course from an early age

Born in London in 1934, Goodall said her fascination with animals began around when she learned to crawl. In her book, In the Shadow of Man, she described an early memory of hiding in a henhouse to see a chicken lay an egg. She was there so long her mother reported her missing to police.

She bought her first book — Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes — when she was 10 and soon made up her mind about her future: Live with wild animals in Africa.

That plan stayed with her through a secretarial course when she was 18 and two different jobs. By 1957, she accepted an invitation to travel to a farm in Kenya.

There she met the famed anthropologist and paleontologist Louis Leakey at a natural history museum in Nairobi. He gave her a job as an assistant secretary.

Three years later, despite Goodall not having a college degree, Leakey asked if she would be interested in studying chimpanzees in what is now Tanzania. She told the AP that he chose her “because he wanted an open mind.”

Goodall found global fame through her frequent appearances in TV specials such as "Miss Goodall and the World of Chimpanzees," which originally aired on CBS in December 1965.

CBS via Getty Images

The beginning was filled with complications. British authorities insisted she have a companion, so she brought her mother. The chimps fled if she got within 500 yards of them. She also spent weeks sick from what she believes was malaria.

But she was eventually able to gain the animals’ trust. By the fall of 1960 she observed the chimpanzee named David Greybeard make a tool from twigs and use it to fish termites from a nest. It was previously believed that only humans made and used tools.

She also found that chimps have individual personalities and share humans’ emotions of pleasure, joy, sadness and fear. She documented bonds between mothers and infants, sibling rivalry and male dominance. She found there was no sharp line between humans and the animal kingdom.

In later years, she discovered chimpanzees engage in a type of warfare, and in 1987 she and her staff observed a chimp “adopt” a 3-year-old orphan that wasn’t closely related.

Taking on an activist role

Her work moved into global advocacy after she watched a disturbing film of experiments on laboratory animals in 1986.

″I knew I had to do something,″ she said. ″It was payback time.″

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and halted her in-person events, she began podcasting from her childhood home in England. Through dozens of Jane Goodall Hopecast episodes, she talked with guests including U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, author Margaret Atwood and marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson.

“If one wants to reach people; If one wants to change attitudes, you have to reach the heart,” she said during her first episode. “You can reach the heart by telling stories, not by arguing with people’s intellects.”

In later years, she pushed back on “gloom and doom” messaging and aggressive tactics by climate activists, saying they could backfire. She also built a strong social media presence, advising millions of followers about the need to end factory farming and how to avoid being paralyzed by the climate crisis.

Her advice: “Focus on the present and make choices today whose impact will build over time.”