One Scientist: Jane Goodall

Are scientists failing to lobby for the environment? Or are they lobbying too hard? Or perhaps they're just lobbying the wrong way, making you feel lousy about yourself and your car? One scientist seems to have found a way to get people to listen to her: That scientist is Jane Goodall.

Some would say that Jane Goodall has spent her whole life studying nature, but that's not entirely true. She was once a little girl growing up in Bournemouth, England, reading and rereading Tarzan and Dr. Dolittle, dreaming about the forests that waited somewhere beyond her door.

When she was 22, a friend in Kenya invited her to visit Africa, and she quit her job as a secretary and went. Within a week of arriving, she had the opportunity to meet the famed archaeologist and paleontologist Louis Leakey. Apparently even at age 22, she had the same persuasiveness she does now: Those delicate English features that could tame a gale were more than the elder scientist could refuse. He offered her a position as his assistant. Of the encounter, Goodall has said this: "He knew I didn’t care about clothes and hair, dresses and parties, and that I really, really, really wanted to live with animals in the bush. And that I didn’t care about a degree — I just wanted to learn."

Up until this point she had only a secretary's degree, but before she turned 24 Leakey would have set her out to study the primates of the Gombe in Tanzania. She had to bring her mother along with her because no one would have allowed her to go to Gombe unaccompanied.

It was miserable at first. The chimpanzees would scamper off every time she got close to them, and her mother wasn't much help; but eventually she worked out how to observe them without imposing. Over the years she would learn more about chimpanzees than any living person — that they use tools; that they hunt; that they make love; that they make war; that, above all, they have personalities and relationships. Leakey would say of her first discovery, "Now we must redefine 'tool,' redefine 'man,' or accept chimpanzees as humans." Goodall would inspire the term 'non-human primate.'

Since the culmination of her study of chimpanzees in the Gombe, Goodall has turned her attention not just to educating the young, but also to activating them. Apart from being the most charming conservationist in the world, she more than most understands the damage we are causing the land, sea, and air. But she doesn't lapse into scolding or pessimism — perhaps because she holds no illusions about human beings' animal nature. Goodall has created a program called Roots & Shoots for children all over the planet. It teaches them where they come from in the natural world and inspires them to live well, speak truth to power, and lead by example.

This is the education every adult should envy; an education no child should do without.

Photo credit: Kafka4Pres