Remembering 2025’s Losses: Dame Jane Goodall

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Although this didn’t make my personal top ten list (neither did the pope, so that tells you how weird I am), without question this is one of the most significant deaths of 2025. The contributions this woman made to the study of animals cannot be understated. Dame Jane Goodall While most women in the 60s were in the June Cleaver mode of housewife, Jane Goodall was roaming around Tanzania, studying chimpanzees for her doctrinal thesis. The love affair started as a child, when her father gave her a stuffed chimpanzee as a toy. Who knew it would lead the youngster to become the preeminent researcher on primate behavior and society? When Goodall began studying for her advanced degrees, women in the scientific field of primatology were nonexistent. She kicked that door down with overwhelming force, becoming not only the first woman in the field but the person widely regarded as the most knowledgeable scientist in primate studies. I mean, she only spent 60 years or so studying them “up close and personal.” Even though she was 91, and given the Dame Commander in the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth (as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Biden), she had no intentions of stopping. In fact, the only thing that did stop her was death: she died of natural causes while on a speaking tour of the United States. Goodall’s contributions not only lie in the vast information she discovered in her decades of research, but also in showing all little girls with stuffed toys that they, too, can grow up and study the deep mysteries of science. Dame Jane Goodall Born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall, April 3, 1934, London, England Died October 1, 2025, Beverly Hills, California (natural causes) (age 91) A brief “Passages” article about her from CBS Sunday Morning: