In 1987, Gary Larson published a cartoon, reproduced below, which called Jane Goodall a tramp. He promptly received a letter from the Jane Goodall Institute calling his cartoon inappropriate and offensive. Larson was immediately apologetic, because he in fact had enormous respect for Goodall and just thought the idea of the cartoon was funny. A year later, the National Geographic Society asked him for permission to use the cartoon for their own fundraising. He apologized and said he couldn’t allow it, explaining about the letter. They said, “That doesn’t sound like the Jane Goodall we know.” She apparently hadn’t even seen the cartoon, but when she finally did, she thought it was quite funny, and proceeds of everything with the image printed on it have gone to the Jane Goodall Institute since.
When she was a child, her father gave her a stuffed chimpanzee named Jubilee. She loved it despite her mother’s friends’ insistence that she would be scared of it. As far as I know, it still sits on her dresser; who gets it now, I don’t know. But Goodall said that Jubilee was the inspiration for her love of animals. She went to a secretarial school, and then she went to a friend’s farm in Kenya. Her friend suggested she contact Louis Leakey, of the Leakey family—descended from a portrait painter, but vast amounts of the family are now scientists. Leakey hired her as a secretary but eventually sent her into Gombe in Tanzania.
At the time, primatology was a heavily male-dominated field. Goodall actually had to go with her mother into the field. Now, it’s true that Goodall didn’t have a degree. She studied primatology some before going into the field, but eventually she became only the eighth person accepted to get a PhD at Cambridge without previously having a BA. These days, much of what we know about chimpanzees is because of Goodall, and primatology is a gender-balanced field. In fact, the only primatologist who even comes close to knowing I exist is a woman.
Unlike her fellow member of the “Trimates,” Dian Fossey, there is no fictional movie about Goodall. On the other hand, Goodall was not murdered by poachers, so there’s that, I guess. But there are many documentaries about her. She is probably the most recognized face of primatology in the world. Her face seemed kind, and she always came across as gentle and friendly. She could speak firmly about how there is no contradiction between religion and evolution, though likely those who need to hear it most didn’t listen.
We are apes, and the chimps Goodall studied were our closest cousins. She was willing to talk about what she’d done wrong when she studied them, and there is some controversy about her findings because of her methods, which she herself acknowledged. She wasn’t perfect—and you can’t even say it was her initial lack of education, because no one knew as much as she would learn. Science owes much to Goodall, Fossey, and the third Trimate, Birutė Galdikas. Galdikas still lives.
