On Jane Goodall, From One Who Would Understand Her Contributions

Photo by Andrius Ordojan on Unsplash

Another acknowledgement from a great scientist

Before her memory fades all too quickly away, even with her final comments making the rounds: Upon Jane Goodall’s death, the Associated Press asked my friend Dr. Carl Safina to add his comments. Those comments didn’t make it into the final edited version of their acknowledgement, so I am sharing them with you here:

Jane Goodall was the first scientist to recognize individuality, and premeditated strategy, in animals other than humans. She reflected this observation with her decision to name, rather than number, the free-living chimpanzees she had gotten to know through intense immersive study. While she was working on her PhD her scientific advisors (who had never studied chimpanzees) excoriated her, telling her everything she was doing and saying was wrong. But she was right. And she asserted herself — as a woman in a men’s game, no less — by sticking with her observations and conclusions rather than bending to preconceived convention and going along to get along. Hundreds of scientists in the decades since have confirmed, in dozens of species of many kinds, that individuals vary, that animals other than humans have lives and are aware. Most importantly, her discovery of tool using chimpanzees blurred the deeply etched artificial…