In 1960, no one knew who Jane Goodall was, or how she would revolutionise our ideas about chimpanzee behaviour and intelligence, and by extension, about human behaviour. When she arrived at Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania, she was 26 year old best known as a protege of Louis Leakey who had worked with him at Olduvai Gorge in the late Fifties.
Over the course of more than five decades now, Goodall has devoted herself to scientific research and to ecological activism, but in 1960, no one could have imagined the important figure that Jane Goodall would become. Today, it’s almost impossible to imagine the field of chimpanzee studies without her.
