Jane Goodall was born April 3, 1934, in Hampstead, London. Her father Mortimer Morris-Goodall, a businessman and her mother was novelist Margaret Joseph.

    When she was a young girl, her father gave her a stuffed chimpanzee that she named Jubilee. This was the beginning of her love for animals. 

     Jane graduated from Uplands Private School in 1950 and in 1952 received her higher certificate. 

   But Jane had dreams of going to Africa to study animals. So, she left school at 18 and went on to work as a film production assistant and as a secretary. She worked hard to save her money.

    Her hard work paid off! Jane was finally able to go to Kenya (a country in Africa) in 1957. Here she met Louis Leakey a well-known anthropologist and paleontologist. 

     This was the moment that changed her life because he encouraged her to study chimpanzees.

    Jane went to study the chimpanzees in the wild in 1960 at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. 

   Here she learned about their behavior, that they used tools, and their community life. Much of what she learned did not match what science believed.

    Her favorite chimpanzee she named David Greybeard had silver fur. He was one of the first chimps in Gombe to begin to trust Jane. She saw him using tools, comforting a friend, and eating meat.

    Fun Fact: There is a carving of David Greybeard on the Tree of Life at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Orlando, Florida.

    After Gombe Jane returned to study at Cambridge University in 1961. Here she received a Ph. D in ethology. 

    Jane Goodall married her first husband, Baron van Lawick, who was a wildlife photographer and Dutch nobleman. They had a son together in 1967 they named Hugo Eric van Lawick. She nicknamed him Grub.

    Then she married Derek Bryceson, who ran Tanzania's national parks, in 1975.