Jane Goodall, who became a global celebrity for her study of chimpanzees in East Africa, died on October 1st in Los Angeles. She was 91.

In 1957, with no formal academic training, she left secretarial work in England and traveled to Kenya, where she met Louis Leakey, the renowned paleoanthropologist who became her mentor. In 1960, at age 26, she went to the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in what is now Tanzania to study chimpanzees. There she built an extraordinary relationship with wild chimps. She gave them names, observed their personalities, and revealed the complexity of their communities, producing remarkable studies of their family life and environment. Also in 1960, she made a discovery that transformed science. She documented chimpanzees making and using tools to fish termites from mounds, overturning the long-held belief that toolmaking was uniquely human. As she later said, “The longer I was there, the more like us I saw that they were … we’ve been so jolly arrogant to think we’re so special.”

In 1965 Cambridge University awarded her a Ph.D. in ethology, even though she had never earned an undergraduate degree. She wrote widely about her work, including her landmark 1971 book: In the Shadow of Man, which brought her Gombe research to a global audience. She also reached millions through National Geographic documentaries and television specials that made her one of the most recognizable scientists of her time. According to the New York Times, the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould said her work, “represents one of the Western world’s great scientific achievements.”

She became an ardent conservationist and advocate for animal welfare, founding the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 and later launching Roots & Shoots, a youth program that continues worldwide today. She was also a pioneer for women in the field. At a time when fieldwork was almost entirely male, she broke barriers, inspired generations.

In later years she became one of the world’s leading voices for the environment, traveling constantly to speak about conservation, climate change, and animal welfare.