Washington DC [US], October 2 (HBTV): World-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall, celebrated for her pioneering research on chimpanzees and her lifelong advocacy for conservation, has died at the age of 91 in Los Angeles, the institute she founded announced.
The Jane Goodall Institute said in a statement that she passed away on Wednesday of natural causes while in California as part of her speaking tour. ‘The Jane Goodall Institute has learned this morning, Wednesday, October 1, 2025, that Dr. Jane Goodall DBE, UN Messenger of Peace and Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute has passed away due to natural causes. She was in California as part of her speaking tour in the United States,’ the statement read.
Goodall was internationally acclaimed for her 65-year study of wild chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania. Her groundbreaking research revealed that chimpanzees form lasting social bonds, use tools, and experience emotions such as joy, empathy, and grief, laying the foundation for modern primatology.
Her work reached global audiences through more than 40 documentaries, including the 2017 National Geographic documentary Jane, which won two Primetime Emmys, and the 2023 film Jane Goodall: Reasons for Hope, which highlighted her habitat restoration projects. She also lent her voice to animated series including The Simpsons and The Wild Thornberries.
Goodall’s detailed observations included naming and closely studying individual chimpanzees such as Flo, Fifi, and David Greybeard. She documented their parenting behaviours, courtship rituals, and social structures, including her finding that chimpanzee mothers give birth only once every four to six years, usually producing one or two offspring.
Born on April 4, 1934, in London as Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall, she was the daughter of Mortimer Herbert Morris-Goodall, a businessman and racing driver, and writer Margaret Myfanwe Joseph. Fascinated by animals since childhood, she travelled to Africa in the 1950s, where she met paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey, who employed her and encouraged her chimpanzee studies.
Goodall completed her PhD in Ethology at Cambridge University in 1965, becoming one of the few scholars to earn the degree without a prior undergraduate degree. She later founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 and launched the global youth programme Roots and Shoots.
She was married twice — first to wildlife photographer Hugo van Lawick, with whom she had a son, and later to Tanzanian politician Derek Bryceson, who passed away in 1980.
Goodall is survived by her son, her sister, and three grandchildren.
(ANI)