Jane Goodall was born in London in 1934. She was educated in Bournemouth and travelled to Kenya in 1957 where little after arriving there she met the palaeontologist Louis Leakey, thanks to whom she took up studying the wild chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream Game Reserve (in present-day Tanzania). In 1965 she gained a doctorate in Ethology at the University of Cambridge. Such was her introduction to the academic world of the university, which has since bestowed countless honoris causa doctorates on her, which stand alongside such awards as the National Geographic Society's Hubbard Medal (1995) and the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). She was appointed U.N. Messenger for Peace in 2002.

A desire to educate in conservation and the protection of wild life, and to inform as wide an audience as possible of her findings, impregnates all Goodall's work, and to this end she has set up the Roots and Shoots Foundation. Thanks to her determination, The Gombe Stream Game Reserve has been turned into a research centre under the protection of a National Park. It is the only place in the world where a group of chimpanzees, its individual members and the genealogy of the group have been studied for forty-five consecutive years. In 1977, Goodall set up the Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education and Conservation in the U.S.A. It is dedicated to the conservation of chimpanzees in Africa and throughout the world, and sponsors research projects in Burundi, Sierra Leone and Gambia. She has also established a Chain of Sanctuaries, where orphan chimpanzees confiscated from poachers and illegal traders are cared for and protected. Goodall has become personally involved in giving conferences and in holding Wildlife Knowledge Weeks. One of her most effective initiatives is the setting up of conservation clubs in schools - the Roots and Shoots Clubs - whose mission is to foster respect and compassion for all living organisms among young people. The number of these clubs is currently over 3.000, in 78 countries around the world.

Outstanding amongst her books are In the Shadow of Man (1971), the Chimpanzees of Gombe (1986) and Through a Window (1990), where she explains her discoveries: how chimpanzees use simple tools; how they form collaborative hunting groups; how they demonstrate their complex, highly intelligent personalities; how they establish subtle, long-term relationships, forming surprisingly organised, complex societal structures.

(Note: Jane Goodall photograph by David S. Holloway / Apix)