Dr. Jane Goodall
Chancellor Blanche Touhill presented the World Ecology
Award to Dr. Jane Goodall at a Gala Dinner held on April 14,
1999 at Grant's Farm. Jane Goodall is the foremost authority on wild chimpanzees
and the most recognizable crusader for their conservation. She was born
in London, England on April 3, 1934 and, after leaving high school, worked
as a secretary at Oxford University and later as an assistant editor at
a documentary film studio. To work with animals and to visit Africa had
always been her overriding passions. Her opportunity to do both came in
1957 when a former classmate invited her to visit her parents' farm in Kenya.
While there she met famed anthropologist and paleontologist Louis Leakey. She worked for Dr. Leakey as a secretary and as a field assistant
at Olduvai Gorge, but soon impressed him so much with her knowledge of African
wildlife that he invited her to begin a study of the wild chimpanzees in
Gombe Stream Reserve in Tanzania. At the time, she had no academic qualifications
and arrived at Gombe in July 1960 with her mother as chaperone, a cook and
his family to establish what has come to be the longest continuous study
of any animal species. She discovered much about the behavior of chimpanzees
but most startling was her observation that they used tools to obtain food.
Until then, it had been thought that what separated humans from other primates
was their ability to use tools. She also discovered that chimpanzees could
be as brutal as their human relatives engaging in inter-clan warfare and
infanticide.
In 1965, Jane was awarded a Ph.D. in ethology by Cambridge University,
only the eighth person to earn a doctorate from Cambridge without first
taking a B.A. She has published her research in academic journals and has
also stimulated public interest in wildlife research and conservation through
her best-selling book-In the Shadow of Man. In 1977,
she founded the Jane Goodall Institute to support the continued
research of wild chimpanzee populations. The Institute has since expanded
its mission to include conservation and environmental education, welfare
for captive chimpanzees, reforestation projects and natural resource management.
Dr. Goodall continues to devote her considerable energy to encouraging people
to show greater concern for wildlife and the environment.