Dame Jane Goodall, DBE (born Valerie Jane Morris Goodall on 3 April 1934) is an English UN Messenger of Peace, primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist. She is well-known for her 45-year study of chimpanzee social and family interactions in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania, and for founding the Jane Goodall Institute.

Early life and studies

Jane Goodall was born in London, England in 1934. As a child she was given a lifelike chimpanzee toy named Jubilee by her father. Goodall was not very interested in animals until her father brought her the stuffed animal. Today, the toy still sits on her dresser in London. After the divorce of her parents when Goodall was 12 years old, she moved with her mother to Bournemouth, England.

Goodall`s interest in animals prompted notable anthropologist Louis Leakey to hire her as his assistant and secretary. He invited her to accompany him and his wife, Mary Leakey, to dig at Olduvai Gorge in eastern Africa. He asked Goodall to study the chimpanzees of Gombe Stream National Park (then known as `Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve`). She arrived at Gombe accompanied by her mother in July 1960. Leakey arranged for her to return to the United Kingdom where she earned a doctorate in ethology from Darwin College, the University of Cambridge in 1964. Along with Dian Fossey, famous for living with gorillas, and Biruté Galdikas, who advanced studies in orangutans, Goodall was one of three women recently dubbed by some as "Leakey`s Angels".

Personal life

Goodall has been married twice. On 28 March 1964 she married aristocratic wildlife photographer Baron Hugo van Lawick at Chelsea Old Church, London, becoming Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall. The couple had a son, Hugo Eric Louis, affectionately known as `Grub`, who was born in 1967. They divorced in 1974. In 1975 she married Derek Bryceson (a member of Tanzania`s parliament and the director of that country`s national parks) and they remained married until his death in 1980. Jane and her younger sister, Judy, both suffer from prosopagnosia, a neurological condition which impairs the recognition of human faces.

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