On October 1, 2025, in Los Angeles, Jane Goodall left this world of natural causes. She was 91 years old. Indeed, she traveled across the United States to share her message. A major figure in primatology and an activist, she transformed our perspective by revealing, in Gombe, the use of tools among the Gombe chimpanzees and by linking science and action. A look back at a life of observations, transmissions, and commitment, and the legacy she leaves behind.
In California, the Final Resting Place
Under the spotlights of a Californian auditorium, the blue of the stage still reflected the glow of the conferences. Indeed, the news circulated that Jane Goodall, 91 years old, passed away in Los Angeles. She died of natural causes after a life spent sharing her knowledge. The announcement, published on October 1, 2025 by the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), was immediately picked up by major international media, which reminded that she was in the United States as part of a public speaking tour. The worlds of science and culture often intersect when it comes to her. Thus, they paused for a moment.
That evening, America was still listening to the UN Messenger of Peace. She explained what had driven her for more than sixty years. Indeed, she was driven by patient curiosity and rigor without stiffness. Moreover, she had the conviction that every human action impacts the fate of other living beings. Her passing was announced with simplicity by her Institute and then relayed by reputable outlets. Indeed, this closes a trajectory that shifted the perceived boundary between humans and animals.
The Gombe Chimpanzees: The Impact of a Gesture
We return to Gombe, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania. A clearing, the oblique morning light, a chimpanzee she named David Greybeard. The story is well-known, but it remains impactful: Jane Goodall sees the animal using a twig to fish for termites. Then, she observes the animal shaping small sticks by stripping their leaves. The shockwave traverses the scientific community. That day, it is not just the observer who is revealed. It is also our representation of the "essence of humanity" that cracks.
The primatologist then documents a complex sociality: embraces, consolations, alliances, but also aggressiveness, raids, territorial wars. She notes the omnivory and organized hunts. The tool ceases to be a human privilege, the ritual is no longer a monopoly. By settling in for the long term at Gombe, the researcher uncovers a behavioral kinship that forces a reevaluation of moral and scientific categories. Ethology, then, changes scale.
From Leakey to Cambridge, Recognition
Before Gombe, there is a beginning. 1957, Nairobi. Louis Leakey spots the young Englishwoman who dreams of Africa. He sends her to the field, convinced that a fresh perspective will see what habit no longer can. In 1960, Jane Goodall begins, almost without a safety net, her observations at Gombe Stream. 1962: Cambridge welcomes her; she earns a doctorate without following the traditional curriculum, sparking debates and salutary revisions.
What follows is an ascent marked by patience and controversies. She is criticized for anthropomorphizing. She responds with accumulated facts and journals kept daily. This syntax of proof eventually convinces. She captures attention but stays her course: naming Flo, Fifi, Frodo, or David is not a weakness; it is recognizing the individuality at the heart of chimpanzee societies.
Instituting for Longevity: The Expanded Work
In 1977, she founds the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI). It aims to support research with conservation programs that place local communities at the center, from the Gombe Research Center to African sanctuaries. The Institute becomes a home for projects and a base for scientific diplomacy. Moreover, it serves as a sounding board for alert and education.
In 1991, Roots & Shoots is born. A simple name that says it all: roots and shoots. Young people take on actions at a local scale and weave, from high school to university, a global network of ecological citizenship. Goodall’s impact broadens: from primatology to education, from field protocol to pedagogy.
Decades later, she is found traveling the world, multiplying conferences, hosting podcasts, supporting campaigns against trafficking, against cruel experiments, for the protection of habitats. The logic is the same: connecting science, ethics, and commitment.
The Media Activist
Very early on, Jane Goodall understood that image could be an ally. National Geographic reports placed her in the global imagination. Television sets, packed halls, meetings with artists or political leaders extended the lesson of Gombe to an audience that would never open a treatise on ethology, a discipline whose methods she popularized. Young people follow her and share her messages on social media. Moreover, they brandish her books and pose with her plush Mr. H, a symbol turned totem.
This media presence never diluted her message. She speaks of climate, biodiversity, animal welfare with astonishing consistency. She reminds that forests stabilize rainfall. However, deforestation weakens human societies. Moreover, consumption drives the plundering of environments. She does not moralize: she explains, she connects, she invites to act, convinced that knowledge remains the surest support for responsibility.
Tributes to Jane Goodall: A Scientific Icon
Upon the announcement of her death, tributes poured in: political leaders, scientists, artists, anonymous individuals. They salute the pioneer, the educator, the activist. Pop culture had already recognized her: her austere silhouette, her pulled-back hair, her calm voice, this constant attention to other living beings. She had become a public figure, identifiable, reassuring, demanding too, who repeated that hope is not a feeling but a discipline. Tributes also come from cultural institutions like UNESCO, highlighting the breadth of her legacy.
This notoriety sometimes obscured her work. It was necessary to remind, beyond the fame, the rigor of a method and the power of a scientific corpus. Primatology owes her for maintaining duration as a condition of intelligibility. Behaviors only reveal themselves to patience. The long term remains the key, and Gombe remains one of the oldest in situ studies of wildlife.
What We Owe Her
The debt is scientific. By observing the use and manufacture of tools among chimpanzees, she described their social life. Moreover, their emotions and conflicts were studied by Jane Goodall. Thus, she redefined boundaries. The comfortable separations between humanity and animality were revealed to be porous. The rigid distinctions were rearranged. One can discuss the manner, the possible biases, the angle. It will remain that her intuition, validated by data, shifted a paradigm.
The debt is also ethical. By conferring a personality to each observed animal, the researcher shifted from science to a politics of the living. Not a confusion, but a requirement: if the non-human other experiences joys and griefs. Moreover, if its community develops strategies and compromises, then our laws must adjust. Consequently, our economies and practices must also adapt.
The debt, finally, is pedagogical. With Roots & Shoots, thousands of classes and workshops have awakened vocations, influenced life choices, made ecology concrete. It is a measurable legacy: projects have been born, forests have been replanted, habitats restored, species protected.
Los Angeles, American Epilogue
That Los Angeles becomes the city of farewell is no coincidence. It is a capital of images. Jane Goodall came there again to speak, awaken, gather. Her American tour was meant, once again, to convert the audience to concrete action. The message was neither naive nor tragic: it was entirely contained in a word she wielded with precision, hope, understood as a method.
The Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) specified that she passed away peacefully, faithful to the end to that elegance of discretion that characterized her. Nothing heroic, nothing spectacular. A life lived, a teaching transmitted, tools left to those who continue.
What Continues
The Jane Goodall Institute announces the continuation of its programs: research at Gombe, conservation by and for communities, sanctuaries like Tchimpounga or Chimp Eden, education initiatives with Roots & Shoots. The teams on the ground, like the offices that organize and fund, take over. There will be tributes, stories, films still. There will especially be projects to carry out and awareness to transform into actions.
The legacy of Jane Goodall is not summed up in a page of an album. It is a method, a morality, a music of proof and transmission. A rigor that never forbade tenderness, nor wonder at a chimpanzee. Indeed, it shapes a branch to make a tool. At Gombe, somewhere, a descendant of David Greybeard still extracts termites. The world continues, a little better informed, a little more responsible.