Your life matters: Jane Goodall (1934-2025) | Tribute

In her latest on-camera interview, English primatologist Jane Goodall used her platform to uplift others. In a direct address to an unknown audience, she says, “Your life matters, and you are here for a reason. And I just hope that reason becomes evident as you live through your life.”

Growing up in a family with two parents who studied anthropology and archaeology, one of whom taught a physical anthropology course at the local community college, some of the first people I considered celebrities were paleoanthropologist and archaeologist Louisy, as well as her protégés Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall. These two women challenged the way we think of primates as social beings who live in communities that are not so different from our own. They showed me, and other girls like me, a path to living life with passion and devoting yourself to something bigger than yourself.

Fossey had his short but impactful life commemorated by the 1988 film “Gorillas in the Mist,” starring an Oscar-nominated Sigourney Weaver as a primatologist who was murdered by poachers at the age of 53. Jane Goodall was much luckier with her work, spanning nearly six decades. By the time she died on October 1 at the age of 91, Goodall was the author of thirty-two books, fifteen of which were written specifically for children and had been featured in more than forty documentary films.

Born in 1934 in Hampstead, London, Goodall became interested in animals after her father gave her a stuffed chimpanzee, which she named Jubilee, rather than a traditional teddy bear. This fascination led her to the White Highlands in the Kenya Colony and Protectorate in 1957. A life-changing meeting with Leakey led to several opportunities for her to study primate behavior and primate anatomy with experts Osman Hill and John Napier, and then to earning a doctorate in ethology from the University of Cambridge. Leakey’s thinking was that if they could learn more about the behavior of extant great apes, it would help his work, which sought to understand the behavior of early hominids.

Goodall said her mother’s encouragement gave her strength as she began her research career in this intensely male-dominated field. Goodall’s pioneering work, as well as her continued advocacy for more young women to join the field, has been cited as a factor in the equalization of men and women working in primatology today.

In her 1999 book “Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey,” Goodall recalled that while observing chimpanzees at Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania in the 1960s, she initially thought they were “nicer than human beings,” but later found, “this chimpanzee could be brutal – and also that they, like us, had a dark side to their nature.” That, along with his discovery that chimpanzees can make tools, helped redefine everything we thought we knew about early humans and our primate cousins. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 with the aim of continuing her research, as well as facilitating legal frameworks to protect wildlife habitats.

Goodall and his work have been the subject of numerous documentaries over the years. Kirk Simon and Karen Goodman’s 1990 short documentary, “Chimpes: So Like Us,” features interviews with Goodall as she describes how each chimpanzee has its own unique voice, just like humans, interspersed with footage of chimpanzees in the wild living their lives. The same year, Judith Dwan Hallet’s “In the Life and Legend of Jane Goodall” also follows Goodall as she does her work in nature, observing animals while teaching what she has learned to others. In this film, Goodall shares with the audience her feelings about her favorite family of chimpanzees, whom she affectionately calls the “F” Troop.

While these early films align with Goodall’s goal of sharing her singular knowledge with the world as a form of preservation and activism, later films about Goodall take a more hagiographic approach, aiming instead to position her in iconic status. However, one recent film stands above the pack: Brett Morgen’s impressionistic 2017 documentary “Jane,” which features stunning, never-before-seen footage of Goodall’s fieldwork, which would become primarily about Goodall’s first husband, who had been hidden in the National Geographic archives until its discovery in 2014. Glass’s passionate score, and the love between Lawick and Goodall’s shining through her breathtaking images form a rich portrait of the pioneer woman and the sacrifices she made to protect this natural world that had so enchanted her.

In March of this year, Goodall was interviewed by filmmaker Brad Falchuk for a Netflix series called “Famous Last Words,” intended to be released only after his death. The hour-long special features a fifty-minute candid conversation between Goodall and Falchuk. The two then share a shot of whiskey, Falchuk leaves the soundstage, and Goodall faces the camera, addressing the world one last time. Goodall’s Goodbye to People of the World lasts five minutes. His speech ends with an urgent call for clarion on the impact of artificial climate change, reminding us that “as we destroy one ecosystem after another, as we create worse climate change, worse loss of diversity, we must do everything in our power to make the world a better place for the children alive today, and for those who will follow.”

Goodall lived her life with purpose, not only rooted in her work with chimpanzees, but also in her mission to conserve our natural world before it was too late. As I read more and more headlines about the destruction of the world’s oceans, the depletion of resources for AI data centers, and the environmental impact of war, I really hope that his life wasn’t lived in vain after all.