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Jane Goodall, Primatologist

Jane Goodall, also known as the woman with chimpanzees, is born in 1934 in London, England. She was fascinated by animals from a very early age, but she decided to study wild animals after she read The Story of Doctor Dolittle and the Tarzan novels.

In 1960, Goodall established in Africa in a champ in the Gombe Stream Game Reserve, which is a national park now. She was there to observe the behavior of chimpanzees in that area. She got married in 1964 to a photographer who was sent there to film her work. However, their marriage didn’t last very long, as the two got divorced a few years later.

Jane Goodall was also received a Ph.D. in ethology in 1965 from the University of Cambridge, making her one of the very few candidates to receive a Ph.D. without having an A.B. degree, as she dropped off school. She co-founded the Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education and Conservation in California, also known as the Jane Goodall Institute. However, they moved the center to the Washington, D.C. area a few years later.

Jane Goodall also created the Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots in 1991, a youth service program. With her research, she was able to make us understand more about chimps. She discovered that they’re omnivorous, not vegetarian as previously believed. Throughout her career, she wrote many books about the behavior of chimps, including In the Shadow of Man (1971)and The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior (1986).

Goodall became a UN Messenger of Peace in 2002 and she’s an honorary member of the World Future Council.

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