Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall was a British scientist who studied wild chimpanzees in Africa. She was born in London in 1934. Her work changed the way scientists think about animals, and the way humans think about themselves. She is one of the most famous scientists of the twentieth century.

As a young girl, Jane loved animals. Her father gave her a stuffed toy chimpanzee named Jubilee, and she carried it everywhere. She read books about Tarzan and Doctor Dolittle and dreamed of living in Africa. Her family did not have money to send her to college. So after high school, she worked as a waitress to save up for a trip to Kenya.

In Africa, she met a famous scientist named Louis Leakey. He believed that studying chimpanzees in the wild could teach us about early humans. In 1960, he sent Jane to Gombe Stream, a forest in Tanzania, to watch them. She was 26 years old and had no science degree.

The chimps ran from her at first. So she sat quietly in the forest, day after day, until they got used to her. After months of patience, they let her come close. She gave them names instead of numbers, which was unusual for scientists at the time. Names like David Greybeard, Flo, and Goliath.

What she saw changed science. She watched a chimp named David Greybeard strip leaves off a twig and poke it into a termite mound to fish out termites to eat. He had made a tool. Until then, scientists thought only humans made tools. When Jane sent the news to Louis Leakey, he wrote back, "Now we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as humans."

Goodall also saw chimps hunt and eat meat, hug and kiss, and even fight wars between groups. Some scientists doubted her at first because she had no degree and gave the chimps names. Cambridge University then accepted her as a graduate student anyway, and she earned a PhD in 1965.

After many years in the forest, Goodall saw that the chimps were in danger. Forests were being cut down, and chimps were being captured and killed. She left fieldwork to become a full-time activist. In 1977, she started the Jane Goodall Institute to protect chimps and their habitats. She also began Roots and Shoots, a program that helps young people work on projects for animals, people, and the environment. Goodall traveled and gave speeches around the world for decades. Her message was simple: every person, even a kid, can make a difference.