Jane Goodall, Legendary Primatologist and Conservationist, Dies at 91

Jane Goodall, Legendary Primatologist and Conservationist, Dies at 91

Jane Goodall, one of the world’s most celebrated conservationists, who achieved both scientific recognition and global fame by documenting the unique behaviors of wild chimpanzees in East Africa, has died in California. She was 91.

Her passing, which occurred while she was on a speaking tour, was announced Wednesday in a social media post by the Jane Goodall Institute. The statement did not specify the exact date of her death.

Dr. Goodall, born in Britain, was just 29 years old in the summer of 1963 when the National Geographic Society, which sponsored her research, published a landmark 37-page, 7,500-word feature on her groundbreaking work at the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in Tanzania.

In the article, she chronicled the lives of the chimpanzees she observed — including Flo, David Greybeard, and Fifi — revealing extraordinary behaviors: making and using tools, eating meat, performing rain dances, and even engaging in organized conflicts.

The feature, accompanied by striking photographs taken by Dutch wildlife photographer Hugo van Lawick (whom she later married), also recounted Goodall’s own struggles. From battling illness and predators to enduring long stretches of frustration, she persisted in her mission to gain the trust of the chimps while living at a primitive research camp on the eastern shores of Lake Tanganyika.

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