Jane Goodall - a willowy blonde who left the civilized world
of England to live in the wilds of Africa to study chimpanzees. Her
observations and concern for her subjects charmed everyone.
"I cannot remember a time when I did not want to go to Africa
to study animals," she said in her first National Geographic article,
published in August 1963. "Therefore, after leaving school, I saved up the
fare and went to Nairobi, Kenya."
Dr. Louis Leakey asked her if she would consider doing a field
study of chimpanzees. She leaped at the challenge and spent the next 19 months
hunting down grants. When the Kenyan authorities expressed reservations about
sending a single white woman into the bush alone, Goodall's mother joined her.
The women set off for Lake Tanganyika in pursuit of their furry subjects. They
found many. Goodall spent hours sitting quietly, trying to gain the animals'
trust.
"To be accepted ... by a group of wild chimpanzees is
the result of months of patience ... ," she wrote. "At last I sat
among them, enjoying a degree of acceptance that I had hardly dreamed possible
.... Most astonishing of all, I saw chimpanzees fashion and use crude
implements - the beginnings of tool use. This discovery could prove helpful to
those studying man's rise to dominance over other primates."
(Adapted from
National Geographic: ‘The 20th Century’)