In December 1958, Jane returned home to England and Leakey began to make arrangements for the expedition, securing the appropriate permissions from the government and raising funds. They just needed to secure funding for the project. His hope was that by studying our closest living relatives (chimpanzees who share a common ancestor with humans) he could discover more about what early humans were like−things he could not learn from fossils alone.

Leakey felt that Jane’s lack of formal academic training was advantageous because she would not be biased by traditional thought and could study chimpanzees with an open mind. He felt her passion for and knowledge of animals and nature, high energy, and fortitude made her a great candidate to study the chimpanzees. She worked there for a time before Leakey decided to send her to the Gombe Stream Game Reserve (what is today Gombe Stream National Park) in Tanzania to study wild chimpanzees. Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey, who offered her a job at the local natural history museum.

There, Jane met famed paleoanthropologist Dr. In March 1957 Jane boarded a ship called the Kenya Castle to visit her friend and her family. At age 23, she left for Africa to visit a friend, whose family lived on a farm outside Nairobi, Kenya. She retained her dream of going to Africa to live among and learn from wild animals, and so she took on a few jobs including waitressing and working for a documentary film company, saving every penny she earned for her goal. Jane was unable to afford college after graduation and instead elected to attend secretarial school in South Kensington, where she perfected her typing, shorthand, and bookkeeping skills. Dolittle series and, in love with Africa, dreamed of traveling to work with the animals featured in her favorite books. When Jane was about eight she read the Tarzan and Dr. She had a much-loved dog, Rusty, a pony, and a tortoise, to name a few of their family pets.

As a child, she had a natural love for the outdoors and animals. Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall, best known simply as Jane Goodall, was born in Bournemouth, England, on April 3, 1934, to Margaret (Vanne) Myfanwe Joseph and Mortimer (Mort) Herbert Morris-Goodall.

My life with the chimpanzees book