{"id":97642,"date":"2025-10-01T20:24:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T20:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/97642\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T20:24:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T20:24:11","slug":"jane-goodall-primatologist-and-global-activist-dies-aged-91-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/97642\/","title":{"rendered":"Jane Goodall, primatologist and global activist, dies aged 91 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientist and global activist Jane Goodall<\/a>, who turned her childhood love of primates into a lifelong quest for protecting the environment, died on Wednesday at the age of 91, the institute she founded said.<\/p>\n

Goodall died of natural causes, the Jane Goodall Institute said in a social media post.<\/p>\n

\u201cDr Goodall\u2019s discoveries as an ethologist revolutionised science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

The primatologist-turned-conservationist spun her love of wildlife into a life-long campaign that took her from a seaside English village to Africa and then across the globe in a quest to better understand chimpanzees, as well as the role that humans play in safeguarding their habitat and the planet\u2019s health overall.<\/p>\n

Goodall was a pioneer in her field, both as a female scientist in the 1960s and for her work studying the behaviour of primates. She created a path for a string of other women to follow suit, including the late Dian Fossey.<\/p>\n

She also drew the public into the wild, partnering with the National Geographic Society to bring her beloved chimps into their lives through film, TV and magazines.<\/p>\n

She upended scientific norms of the time, giving chimpanzees names instead of numbers, observing their distinct personalities, and incorporating their family relationships and emotions into her work. She also found that, like humans, they use tools.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have found that after all there isn\u2019t a sharp line dividing humans from the rest of the animal kingdom,\u201d she said in a 2002 TED Talk.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Jane Goodall: \u2018I\u2019m not going to give in. I\u2019ll die fighting, that\u2019s for sure\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\"JaneJane Goodall, the world\u2019s foremost authority on chimpanzees, with Nana at a zoo in Magdeburg, Germany, in 2004. Photograph: Jens Schlueter\/AFP\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

As her career evolved, she shifted her focus from primatology to climate advocacy after witnessing widespread habitat devastation, urging the world to take quick and urgent action on climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re forgetting that we\u2019re part of the natural world,\u201d she told CNN in 2020. \u201cThere\u2019s still a window of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2003, she was appointed a Dame of the British Empire and, in 2025, she received the US presidential Medal of Freedom.<\/p>\n

Born in London in 1934 and then growing up in Bournemouth on England\u2019s south coast, Goodall had long dreamed of living among wild animals. She said her passion for animals, stoked by the gift of a stuffed toy gorilla from her father, grew as she immersed herself in books such as Tarzan and Dr Dolittle.<\/p>\n

\"JaneJane Goodall appearing in a television special on CBS in Tanzania in 1965. Photograph: CBS via Getty <\/p>\n

She set her dreams aside after leaving school, unable to afford university. She worked as a secretary and then for a film company until a friend\u2019s invitation to visit Kenya put the jungle – and its inhabitants – within reach.<\/p>\n

After saving up money for the journey, by boat, Goodall arrived in the east African nation in 1957. There, an encounter with famed anthropologist and paleontologist Dr Louis Leakey and his wife, archaeologist Mary Leakey, set her on course to work with primates.<\/p>\n

Under Leakey, Goodall set up the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve, later renamed the Gombe Stream Research Centre, near Lake Tanganyika in present-day Tanzania. There she discovered chimpanzees ate meat, fought fierce wars, and perhaps most importantly, fashioned tools in order to eat termites.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as humans,\u201d Leakey said of the discovery.<\/p>\n

Although she eventually paused her research to earn a PhD at Cambridge University, Goodall remained in the jungle for years. Her first husband and frequent collaborator was wildlife cameraman Hugo van Lawick.<\/p>\n

Through the National Geographic\u2019s coverage, the chimpanzees at Gombe Stream soon became household names – most famously, one Goodall called David Greybeard for his silver streak of hair.<\/p>\n

Nearly 30 years after first arriving in Africa, however, Goodall said she realised she could not support or protect the chimpanzees without addressing the dire disappearance of their habitat. She said she realised she would have to look beyond Gombe, leave the jungle, and take up a larger global role as a conservationist.<\/p>\n

\"BritishBritish zoologist Jane Goodall watching her photographer husband, Baron Hugo Von Lawick, adjust a camera, to which a baboon is clinging, in the Gombe Reserve, east central Africa. Photograph: Hulton Archive\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

In 1977, she set up the Jane Goodall Institute, a non-profit organisation aimed at supporting the research in Gombe as well as conservation and development efforts across Africa. Its work has since expanded worldwide and includes efforts to tackle environmental education, health and advocacy.<\/p>\n

She made a new name for herself, travelling an average of 300 days a year to meet with local officials in countries around the world and speaking with community and school groups. She continued her world tours into her 90s.<\/p>\n

She later expanded the institute to include Roots & Shoots, a conservation program aimed at children.<\/p>\n

It was a stark shift from her isolated research, spending long days watching chimpanzees.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt never ceases to amaze me that there\u2019s this person who travels around and does all these things,\u201d she told the New York Times during a 2014 trip to Burundi and back to Gombe. \u201cAnd it\u2019s me. It doesn\u2019t seem like me at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

A prolific author, she published more than 30 books with her observations, including her 1999 bestseller Reason For Hope: A Spiritual Journey, as well as a dozen aimed at children.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Jane review: A riveting journey into the wild with Jane GoodallOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Goodall said she never doubted the planet\u2019s resilience or human ability to overcome environmental challenges.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, there is hope … It\u2019s in our hands, it\u2019s in your hands and my hands and those of our children. It\u2019s really up to us,\u201d she said in 2002, urging people to \u201cleave the lightest possible ecological footprints.\u201d<\/p>\n

She had one son, known as Grub, with van Lawick, whom she divorced in 1974. Van Lawick died in 2002.<\/p>\n

In 1975, she married Derek Bryceson. He died in 1980. – Reuters <\/p>\n

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientist and global activist Jane Goodall, who turned her childhood love of primates into a lifelong quest for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,62447,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-97642","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-jane-goodall","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topstories","21":"tag-world","22":"tag-world-news","23":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}