A Sad Farewell to Dr. Jane Goodall

Farewell to Jane Goodall, the brilliant British primatologist, anthropologist and author best known for her field research on chimpanzees, which showed that they experience and express emotions like grief and love, just like humans do. Growing up, she was one of my greatest heroines, next to journalist Nellie Bly and Coretta Scott King. She died at age 91 last week, while on a speaking tour in the U.S.

A conservation giant, Dr. Goodall was a trailblazer at a time when women were routinely shunted to the margins. A quote often attributed to her is: “it actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.” Goodall is now rightfully lauded around the world. Her investigation of chimpanzee behavior in the wild was once heralded as “one of the Western world’s great scientific achievements.”

Her work also showed the world that scientific rigor need not be incompatible with respect, humility, and empathy, according to Psychology Today. She set out a formative example for future researchers’ mental health – encouraging people to connect with nature, be compassionate toward themselves and others, and to be courageous in taking collective action for the good of all. Even as an internationally-renowned scientist, she continued to be generous with her time and attention. Watch the moving moment in this YouTube video when she hugged an injured chimpanzee named Wounda, who her team had nursed back to health and were about to release into an island sanctuary.

She also had a keen sense of humor. A Far Side cartoon by Gary Larsen enraged the Jane Goodall Institute by depicting a jealous female chimpanzee grilling her mate as to whether he was still doing “a little ‘research’ with that Jane Goodall tramp?” A lawyer drafted a letter to Larsen and his syndicate calling the cartoon “inexcusable” and an “atrocity,” but when Goodall, who had been traveling in Africa, returned, she was amused. “It all helps to put us humans in our place, and we desperately need putting in our place,” she concluded.

She and Larsen became friends, and he gave his permission to the Goodall Institute to create a T-shirt with the cartoon on it and keep all the proceeds. However, “as though to balance the cosmic scales,” the Comics Alliance reported, Larsen was attacked by a male chimpanzee named Frodo while visiting Goodall’s research facility in Tanzania.

Dr. Jane Goodall at the ‘In Defense of Animals Hosts 2nd Annual Guardian Award’at the Paramount Studios in Los Angeles, USA on October 30, 2004. Photo: Tinseltown/Shutterstock

In a recent interview released posthumously on Netflix, Goodall credits her mother’s unwavering support for her interest in bugs and nature propelled her to become a scientist. She reveals who she would like to send off the earth in a spaceship – for good. And asked what parting words she had for everyone, she talked about how every life matters, concluding, “Do your best while you’re still on this beautiful planet Earth that I look down upon from where I am now. God bless you all.”