How Did Jane Goodall Get Her Start(s)?

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 stuff works dot com. And for more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.