Jane Goodall Facts

Jane Goodall Facts
Dame Jane Morris Goodall, DBE (April 3, 1934) is an English primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist, and UN Messenger of Peace. She is the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees and is best known for her 55-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees. She has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues.
Interesting Jane Goodall Facts:
Jane Goodall was born in London, England.
Her parents gave her a stuffed chimpanzee they named Jubilee when she was a child and it started a life-long love of animals.
She still has the toy on her dresser.
Because of her love of animals and Africa, in 1957 she visited a friend in the Kenya highlands and decided to stay.
On the advice of a friend, she called archaeologist, Louis Leakey, to talk with him about African animals.
Leakey believed that a study of the great apes could provide information on the early hominids and he was looking for a serious researcher.
In 1958 Goodall went to London to study primates with Osman Hill and John Napier.
In 1960 she and her mother returned to Africa and to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania.
She began studying the Kasakela chimpanzee community where she documented their distinct personalities and behaviors such as hugging, kissing and tickling among the primates.
Before Goodall, humans had long been called "Man, the Toolmaker" but she observed chimpanzees making and using primitive tools to get food.
She also overturned the notion that chimps were vegetarian and documented that they kill and eat small animals.
She painstakingly documented the 1974 to 1978 Gombe Chimpanzee War that took place between two troops of chimpanzees and revolutionized the thinking of chimpanzee sociobiology.
In 1962 Leakey sent Goodall to Cambridge University where she obtained a PhD in Ethnology and was only the 8th person ever admitted to the PhD program without first obtaining a B.A. or B.S
Her thesis, titled "Behavior of the free-Ranging Chimpanzee," detailed her five year study at the Reserve.
In 1974 she married Derek Bryceson who was a member of Tanzania's parliament and the director of their national parks, a position which allowed him to protect Goodall's research area from tourism.
In 1977 she established the Jane Goodall Institute which is a leader in the global effort to protect chimpanzees and their habitat.
On March 17, 2011 Duke University announced that it is the repository for Goodall's notes, photographs and data which have been digitized and are available on-line.
In April 2002 she was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace, and she has received the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, the French Legion of honor, the Kyoto Prize, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Sciences.
She is honored for her conservation work with a plaque on the Tree of Life at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom.


Related Links:
Facts
Scientists Facts
Animals Facts