On Wednesday, the Jane Goodall Institute announced that its founder, the legendary primatologist and conservationist Dr. Jane Goodall, had died at 91.
Goodall didn’t just rise to the top of her field; she transcended it. Maybe you know her for her groundbreaking, immersive work with chimpanzees, in which she documented them doing things it was previously thought were exclusive to humans. Maybe you know her for her nature conservation efforts; maybe you’ve read one of her dozens of books; or maybe you’ve just seen one of the many famous pictures of her with the subjects of her work, like this one.
Goodall was one of the best-known and most beloved scientists of her generation.
To get a better understanding of her work and her legacy, I called Richard W. Wrangham. Today, Wrangham is the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology, Emeritus, at Harvard, but he spent the formative years of his career researching chimpanzees in Tanzania and working as a protégé to Dr. Goodall. Below is our conversation, lightly edited for clarity.
