Dame Jane Goodall, the pioneering conservationist whose decades of research revolutionised humanity’s understanding of chimpanzees, has died at the age of 91.

Goodall first rose to prominence in 1960 at Gombe in Tanzania, where her patient fieldwork overturned scientific consensus. Observing a male chimpanzee strip a twig to fish termites, she showed that toolmaking was not unique to humans. Her discoveries went on to reveal the complexity of chimpanzee life, from close-knit family bonds to violent territorial conflict, reshaping primatology and public thinking about animal minds.

The scientific establishment did not initially welcome her approach. She had no formal training when she began and her habit of naming chimpanzees drew criticism in a male-dominated field. Yet her mentor, Louis Leakey, defended her work, valuing her freedom from what he called: “the reductionist attitude of science to animals”. In time, her research became recognised as groundbreaking, and she was embraced as one of the great natural scientists of her generation.

Goodall was born in London in 1934 and grew up in Bournemouth on the English south coast. She first came to Africa in 1957, when she secured work as a secretary in Kenya, then a British colony. Knowing of her interest in animals, a friend persuaded Goodall to contact Leakey, who at the time was looking for a research assistant to investigate the behaviour of chimpanzees. She soon became one of the world’s leading experts on chimpanzee behaviour. She also became only the eighth person ever to be allowed to study for a doctorate at Cambridge University without first earning an undergraduate degree.

In later life Goodall gave up the forest to campaign around the world, calling attention to the accelerating loss of biodiversity. Well into her nineties she travelled with her toy monkey, Mr H, urging audiences to act on climate change and habitat destruction. “We still have a window of time,” she said in 2024: “but it’s a window that’s closing.”

Tributes poured in from across the scientific world. Adrian Smith, president of the Royal Society, hailed: “an amazing scientist who inspired people to see the natural world in a new way”. Professor Cat Hobaiter, a primatologist she inspired, added that Goodall would want action, not mourning: “We all have a lot to be getting on with to make sure that we are not the last generation to live alongside wild chimpanzees.”