LONDON: Renowned scientist and activist Jane Goodall, who transformed a childhood fascination with primates into a lifelong mission to protect the environment, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 91, her institute announced.
The Jane Goodall Institute said she died of natural causes.
“Dr. Goodall’s discoveries as an ethologist revolutionised science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world,” it said in a statement.
Goodall rose to global prominence for her groundbreaking studies on chimpanzees in the 1960s, defying both scientific norms and gender barriers of her time. She gave chimps names rather than numbers, recognised their distinct personalities, and highlighted their social bonds and emotional lives. Her discovery that chimpanzees used tools challenged long-held assumptions about the uniqueness of humans.
“We have found that after all there isn’t a sharp line dividing humans from the rest of the animal kingdom,” she told a TED audience in 2002.
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Her work, shared with the world through her partnership with the National Geographic Society, brought the lives of wild chimpanzees into living rooms across the globe and inspired a generation of researchers, including fellow primatologist Dian Fossey.
Over time, Goodall expanded her mission beyond primatology. Witnessing widespread habitat destruction, she became one of the most prominent voices for climate action, urging urgent steps to protect biodiversity and combat global warming. “We’re forgetting that we’re part of the natural world,” she warned in 2020.
Her contributions were widely recognised. In 2003, Queen Elizabeth II made her a Dame of the British Empire, and in 2025 she was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honour.
From England to Africa
Born in London in 1934, Goodall grew up on England’s south coast, where her passion for animals was nurtured by childhood books like Tarzan and Dr Dolittle, and by a stuffed toy gorilla given to her by her father. Though unable to afford university after finishing school, she never gave up her dream of living among wild animals.
She worked as a secretary and later in a film company before saving up for a sea voyage to Kenya in 1957. That trip changed her life. There, she met famed anthropologist Louis Leakey and his wife, archaeologist Mary Leakey, who set her on a path that would take her deep into the jungles of Tanzania — and into scientific history.