Lady Jane Goodall has revolutionized our understanding of our nearest primates cousins

It was a serene force of nature. And she never hesitated in her mission to help the animals she devoted to her life.

When I interviewed Lady Jane Goodall last year, she cleared her calm, even if she pressed me at home that a great extinction crisis faced our planet.

During a slightly blurred video call, I could see his toy monkey, Mr. H, behind her.

This toy was given to him almost 30 years ago by a friend. Dr. Goodall, who was 90 years old when we talked, still traveled the world with Mr. H by his side.

The researchers to whom I spoke this evening, whose work, Dr. Goodall, inspired, or who were simply inspired by his energy, are in shock at his death at the age of 91.

Professor CAT HOBAITTER, of the University of St Andrews, who worked with chimpanzees – to study their communication – for more than 15 years, told me that a reason why Dr. Goodall had such an impact was that she “abandoned what she loved – spending time with her beloved chimpanzees – to travel tirelessly and share the world and share her passion with everyone”.

In the many years that Jane Goodall observed and studied the chimpanzees, she revolutionized our understanding of our nearest primate cousins.

The key to his revolutionary discoveries was his curiosity and his ability – quietly – to observe.

It was during her stay in the tropical forest reserve of Gombe, Tanzania, when she stopped to spend time looking at a male chimpanzee who was looking for.

The chimpanzee took a twig, folded and the stripping of his leaves, then he pushed it into the nest of a termitis. He then used this stripped and folded twig to place the termites in his mouth.

This observation – in 1960 – challenged the belief that only humans have made and used tools.

Even if it has changed our understanding of the natural world, Dr. Goodall has faced cynicism and sexism. She was not officially trained as a scientist. And, in the 1960s, it was unusual.

His work in Gombe continued to show that the chimpanzees also form solid family ties – and even that they are committed to war on the territory.

But his approach – associate so closely with the animals that she studied, appointing them and even qualifying them as “my friends” – made her unpopular with the scientific establishment dominated by men.

His supervisor and mentor, Professor Louis Leakey, saw the value of this informality.

“He wanted someone whose mind was not spoiled by the reductionist attitude of science towards animals,” she said.

Now the scientific establishment is in shock from the loss of a great scientist.

Adrian Smith, president of the Royal Society, described it as “an incredible scientist who inspired people to see the natural world in a new way”.

Roger Highfield, from Science Museum in London, which awarded Dr. Goodall a scholarship earlier this year, described it as “inspiration”.

“She was great and she is an incredibly shocking news, because she completely changed our way of thinking other species and how we think of ourselves-she challenged human exceptionalism,” he said.

Jane Goodall finally turned her goal from her chimpanzees to the propagation of the word on the protection of nature.

When she spoke to me for BBC inside science in 2024, she promoted a mission to plant trees and housing restoration that her eponymous foundation carried out in Uganda.

“We still have a time window to slow climate change and the loss of biodiversity,” she said at the time. “But it’s a window that closes.”

Professor Hobaiter, one of Dr. Goodall’s many scientists, said to me, “Jane would be the first person to tell us that what the world needs right now is not sad because of his loss, but to go to work.

“We all have a lot to do to make sure that we are not the latest generation to live alongside wild chimpanzees.”