Four decades ago, a leading zoologist dismissed Jane Goodall as an amateur. She agreed. “My future is so ridiculous,” she wrote. “I just squat here, chimp-like, on my rocks, pulling out prickles and thorns, and laugh to think of this unknown ‘Miss Goodall’ who is said to be doing scientific research somewhere.”
But within a few months of beginning her study of chimpanzees in 1960, insinuating herself into their lives in the forests of Africa,she made a shocking discovery: Chimpanzees construct tools. Legendary anthropologist Louis Leakey announced that because of Goodall’s observations, “we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as human.” She soon gained entrance to a doctoral program at Cambridge University, even though her highest previous degree was from a secretarial school, and was well on her way to becoming a scientific icon.
To this slim, ponytailed young woman, chimps looked more clever, more scary, and often ...
