Upcoming Appearances
Coming book events for Dale Peterson
Jane Goodall
Lecture Date: February 7, 2019
The Dovetail Cultural Resources Group Lecture
Because the colonial authorities would not allow a European woman to go into a wilderness by herself, Jane Goodall brought her mother, and on July 14, 1960, the two of them pitched their tents in the forest of the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in Tanganyika Territory. By summer's end, Goodall had made more clear observations of wild chimpanzees than anyone ever had done. In October, she witnessed chimpanzees eating meat, a startling observation that contributed to a scientific revolution in recognizing the great diversity of primate behavior. In November, she documented wild chimpanzees fashioning and using simple tools, a second revolutionary observation that overturned the anthropological cliché of "Man the Toolmaker."
Within a couple of years, Goodall was internationally recognized for her work at Gombe, and—once she acquired the requisite PhD in 1965—she began gradually to overcome the prejudices against her as a woman and as an amateur who had belatedly turned professional. Within another decade or two, Dr. Jane Goodall was at last accepted by her peers as a great pioneering primatologist and among the most accomplished women scientists of the twentieth century.
