Goodall, Jane (1934– )

English primatologist and conservationist who has studied the chimpanzee community on Lake Tanganyika since 1960, and is a world authority on wild chimpanzees.

Goodall was born in London. She left school at 18 and worked as a secretary and a film production assistant, until she had an opportunity to work for anthropologist Louis Leakey in Africa. She began to study the chimpanzees at the Gombe Stream Game Reserve, on Lake Tanganyika. Goodall observed the lifestyles of chimpanzees in their natural habitats, discovering that they are omnivores, not herbivores as originally thought, and that they have highly developed and elaborate forms of social behaviour. In 1964 she married Hugo van Lawick the Dutch wildlife photographer, and he collaborated with her on several of her books and films. They divorced later. She obtained a PhD from Cambridge University in 1965, despite the fact that she had never been an undergraduate. Her books include In the Shadow of Man (1971), The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behaviour (1986), and Through a Window (1990). In the 1990s most of Goodall's time was devoted to establishing sanctuaries for illegally captured chimpanzees, fundraising, and speaking out against the unnecessary use of animals in research.