Biography zoologist famous

(1934-)

Who Is Jane Goodall?

Jane Goodall set out to Tanzania in 1960 to study wild chimpanzees. She immersed herself in their lives, bypassing more rigid procedures to make discoveries about primate behavior that have continued to shape scientific discourse. A highly respected member of the world scientific community, she advocates for ecological preservation through the Jane Goodall Institute.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Dame Jane Morris Goodall
BORN: April 3, 1934
BIRTHPLACE: London, England
SPOUSE: Derek Bryceson (m. 1975–1980), Hugo van Lawick (m. 1964–1974)
CHILDREN: Hugo Eric Louis van Lawick

Early Years and Interest in Animals

Goodall was born on April 3, 1934, in London, England, to Mortimer Herbert Goodall, a businessperson and motor-racing enthusiast, and the former Margaret Myfanwe Joseph, who wrote novels under the name Vanne Morris Goodall. Along with her sister, Judy, Goodall was reared in London and Bournemouth, England.

Goodall's fascination with animal behavior began in early childhood. In her leisure time, she observed native birds and animals, making extensive notes and sketches, and read widely in the literature of zoology and ethology. From an early age, she dreamed of traveling to Africa to observe exotic animals in their natural habitats.

Goodall attended the Uplands private school, receiving her school certificate in 1950 and a higher certificate in 1952. She went on to find employment as a secretary at Oxford University, and in her spare time also worked at a London-based documentary film company to finance a long-anticipated trip to Africa.

Learning from Anthropologist Louis Leakey

At the invitation of a childhood friend, Goodall visited South Kinangop, Kenya, in the late 1950s. Through other friends, she soon met the famed anthropologist Louis Leakey, then curator of the Coryndon Museum in Nairobi. Leakey hired her as a secretary and invited her to participate in an anthropological dig at the now-famous Olduvai

American entomologist (1867–1923)

Charles Henry Turner (February 3, 1867 – February 14, 1923) was an American zoologist, entomologist, educator, and comparative psychologist, known for his studies on the behavior of insects, particularly bees and ants. Born in Cincinnati, Turner was the first African American to receive a graduate degree at the University of Cincinnati and among the first African Americans to earn a PhD from the University of Chicago. He spent most of his career as a high school teacher at Sumner High School in St. Louis. Turner was one of the first scientists to systematically examine the question of whether animals display complex cognition, studying arthropods such as spiders and bees. He also examined differences in behavior between individuals within a species, a precursor to the study of animal personality.

Personal life

Charles Henry Turner was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on February 3, 1867. He was born to parents Thomas Turner, a church custodian, and Addie Campbell, a nurse from Lexington, Kentucky. His father had moved from Alberta to Cincinnati. He married Leontine Troy in 1886. They had three children; Henry Owen Turner (1892–1956), Louise Mae Turner (1892,1894-?), and Darwin Romanes Turner (1894–1983). Leontine died in 1895, and Turner married Lillian Porter in 1907 or 1908. Lillian survived her husband, who died in Chicago at his son Darwin's home

Zoological studies as the branch of biology, which studies all aspects of the animal kingdom and their interaction with the environment, have possibly been the earliest attempts of organizing the knowledge about different life forms that live around us.

Beginning from the classification and nomenclature of animals and plants to animal cloning and genome, zoologists have played a crucial role in understanding our world. Here are ten famous zoologists and how their efforts have contributed to the overall knowledge we are privileged to have access to today.

Aristotle (348 BC – 322 BC)

Aristotle is best known as one of the most prominent philosophers of all time. He was also an esteemed student of Plato and later became Alexander The Great’s teacher. Although less known as a zoologist, Aristotle is to be thanked for the first-ever classification of the animal kingdom.

He proposed that the animal kingdom should be classified as blooded and non-blooded animals along with its respective sub-classifications. The blooded animals are further divided into four-footed, young-bearing, egg-laying animals, fish, and birds. The non-blooded animals are sub-categorized as insects, mollusks, and crabs. Aristotle also wrote seminal zoological works that laid the base for the structured study of zoology for all of its subsequent successors to this day. Those works are De Generatione Animalium, Historia Animalium, and De Partibus Animalium.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1774 – 1829)

De Lamarck is perhaps one of the most controversial figures in the study of evolution. Although his family intended for him to go into clerical work, the study of religion was not of interest to him. Lamarck started as a botanist, but after he was given an invitation to join the Jardin des Plantes, he became a zoologist.

Even though most will associate his name with the ideas behind organic evolution, he has made significant and plentiful contributions t

English zoologist (born 1934)

For the Australian author, see Jane R. Goodall.

Dame Jane Morris GoodallDBE (; born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall; 3 April 1934), formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English zoologist, primatologist and anthropologist. She is considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, after 60 years' studying the social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees. Goodall first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania to observe its chimpanzees in 1960.

She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots programme and has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues. As of 2022, she is on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project. In April 2002, she was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace. Goodall is an honorary member of the World Future Council.

Early life

Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall was born in April 1934 in Hampstead, London, to businessman Mortimer Herbert Morris-Goodall [de] (1907–2001) and Margaret Myfanwe Joseph (1906–2000), a novelist from Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, who wrote under the name Vanne Morris-Goodall.

The family later moved to Bournemouth, and Goodall attended Uplands School, an independent school in nearby Poole.

As a child, Goodall's father gave her a stuffed toy chimpanzee named Jubilee as an alternative to a teddy bear. Goodall has said her fondness for it sparked her early love of animals, commenting, "My mother's friends were horrified by this toy, thinking it would frighten me and give me nightmares." Jubilee still sits on Goodall's dresser in London.

Africa

Goodall had always been drawn to animals and Africa, which brought her to the farm of a friend in the Kenya highlands in 1957. From there, she obtained work as a secretary, and acting on her friend's adv