How Did Jane Goodall Get Her Start(s)?

In July of 1960, 26-year-old Jane Goodall began setting up her field station at Gombe, which would become the site of the longest-running wildlife research project in history. Learn more about Jane Goodall's life and legacy in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren vocal Bomb here. Some people just don't quit. It's
okay to quit occasionally it's best to. But let Dr
Jane Goodall be an example to us all. Sometimes you
have a far fetched dream, and instead of dismissing it,
you do it anyway. And when you've achieved what you

(00:23):
set out to do, just when you're at the top
of your game, your dream might change based on what
you've learned along the way. Your new dream is bigger
and more difficult to realize, but you do it anyway,
repeat into old age and never slowing down, and you
might even get nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The
key to doctor Goodall's persistence seems to have a lot
to do with knowing what she liked from a very

(00:43):
young age and then just insisting on doing it. Her
father gave her a stuffed chimpanzee when she was a baby,
and she took it with her everywhere, even though it
was by all accounts terrifying. She grew up loving to
observe in catalog animals and dreamed of one day living
with African animals and dating books about them. For a living.
Her mother, who was a novelist herself, told Goodall that

(01:04):
that seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea, even though it
was the nineteen forties and not at all but middle
class English girls were expected to do. After she finished school,
Goodall couldn't afford to go to college, so she worked
odd jobs in London for a few years until a
friend invited her to visit her family's farm in Kenya,
at which point Goodall immediately quit her job and waited
tables until she made enough money to pay for the

(01:26):
price of boat fair to Africa. While in Kenya, her
friends suggested she contacted the paleontologist Louis Leakey, curator of
the Corindin Museum in Nairobi, to discuss primates. A Leaky
was interested in studying primate behavior in order to better
understand early human species. Leaky hired Goodall as his field
assistant on a paleontological dig and later asked her to

(01:48):
return to England to research primates and raise money for
a long term observational study on wild chimpanzees at the
gum Bay Stream at National Park in Tanzania. In July
of nineteen sixty six, year old Jane good All began
setting up her field station at Gombe, which would become
the site of the longest running wildlife research project in history.
British authorities initially balked at the idea of a young

(02:09):
woman doing this kind of work on chaperone, so Goodall's
mother Van accompanied her for the first few months. Goodall
observed the chimpanzees daily for two years before she earned
their trust. Her method was just to watch the animals
and imitate their actions, recording everything that happened in a
field journal. Two of Goodall's most important discoveries during this
period had to do with what chimps ate and how

(02:31):
they went about getting food. Goodall was the first to
observe chimpanzees killing and eating the meat of small mammals.
Prior to this, they were thought to be vegetarian, and
perhaps her biggest contribution to our understanding of primates was
the revelation that chimps used collected and modified grass stems
and sticks as tools to fish termites out of their nests.
Goodall's discoveries were so significant Leaky said, now we must

(02:54):
redefine tool, redefine man, and he arranged for her to
write a dissertation at Cambridge University on the behaviors of
wild chimpanzees. It was accepted, and she became one of
only eight people ever to graduate from Cambridge with her
PhD without first earning her undergraduate degree. In nineteen sixty four,
Goodall married hu Van Lawick, a Dutch wildlife photographer who

(03:15):
Leaky sent to record her activity in the field. They
had a son in nineteen sixty seven, who spent his
early life with his parents at Gombay. After Goodall in
Lawick divorced in nineteen seventy four, Goodall married Derek Bryson
in nineteen seventy five, who was the director of Tanzania's
National Parks. During this time, Goodall published books about her
experiences in research at Goombay, including In the Shadow of Man,

(03:37):
which was criticized by scientists because of Goodall's habit of
naming the subjects of her research. She called her most
famous studies subject David Graybeard, but the book was wildly
popular and has since been translated into forty eight languages.
As she lived and worked in Gombay, she began to
notice changes to the chimpanzees habitat deforestation and mining practices
forced the animals out of their homes and into smaller

(03:59):
and smaller areas. More than one million wild chimpanzees lived
in Africa a hundred years ago, but today only a
fifth of that population exists. Goodall saw the writing on
the wall, which is why in the nineteen eighties, good
All changed her focus from observing chimps to working to
protect their habitat. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute in
nineteen seventy seven, which works to keep human communities and

(04:21):
wild chimpanzee populations in Africa healthy and coexisting peacefully. Roots
and shoots as a program to empower young people worldwide
to make a difference in their local communities. Now, at
the age of eighty five, Goodall spends about three hundred
days a year traveling and speaking about Africa, chimpanzees, the environment,
and her other passions. Although good All sees the hideous

(04:45):
parts of what humans are doing to our planet, she
continues to be hopeful about our future. She wrote in
a New York Times op ed in quote, the lust
for greed and power has destroyed the beauty we inherited,
but altruism, compassion, and love have not been destroyed. All
that is beautiful in humanity has not been destroyed. The
beauty of our planet is not dead, but lying dormant,

(05:07):
like the seeds of a dead tree. We shall have
another chance. In twenty nineteen, Goodall was nominated for the
Nobel Peace Prize. She was also included on the twenty
nineteen Time one hundred list of the one hundred most
influential people in the world. We spoke via email with
the author of the petition to nominate Goodall for the prize,
one Myron Shekel, a research associate at Western Washington University's

(05:29):
Department of Anthropology. They said, I believe there's no better
choice to receive the next Nobel Peace Prize. Civilization is
today facing perhaps its grace challenge ever, the twin apocalyptic
threats of global climate change and biodiversity loss. Both are
caused by humans, and both are linked in that both
stem from human misuse of the environment. No one has

(05:50):
ever done more or better work than Jane Goodall to
bring peace between humans and their environment and thereby create
the conditions under which humans can be at peace with
each other. Jane Goodall is the global face for Global Peace.
Today's episode was written by Jesselyn Shields and produced by
Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart

(06:13):
Radio's How Stuff Works. For more on this and lots
of other topics that aren't monkeying around get it because
chimp serve apes, not monkeys, visit our home planet, how
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