Jane Goodall

Born in London on 3 April 1934, Goodall arrived in Tanzania in 1960 under the guidance of palaeontologist Louis Leakey with no formal degree, only a determination to observe wild chimpanzees as no one had before. Her field notes documented tool use, complex emotion, lasting social bonds, organised warfare, and knowledge passed across generations - findings that collapsed the traditional boundary separating human from animal. Cambridge awarded her a PhD in ethology in 1965, a rare path for someone who had bypassed undergraduate training. She wrote 32 books, starting with In the Shadow of Man in 1971, which reached readers in 48 languages. In 1977 she founded the Jane Goodall Institute, later adding the global Roots & Shoots youth programme in 1991, and spent her later decades on the road - over 300 days a year at her peak - pressing for conservation, climate action, and the ethical treatment of captive animals. She died on 1 October 2025, still serving on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project.