Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall is a biologist who was born in war-torn London on April 3, 1934. Not long after Jane's arrival, the Goodall family moved to a town along the southern coast of England, called Bournemouth. On her second birthday, Jane's father gave her a stuffed chimpanzee named Jubilee after a baby chimp that was born at the London Zoo. The toy was quite life-like thus causing concern among her father's friends who thought it would perhaps frighten the toddler. Jane, however, fell in love with the gift, and now, sixty-four years later, Jubilee sits in her won chair in Goodall's England home.Growing up, Jane was always fascinated by wildlife. She knew she wanted to study living animals since before she can remember. When she was four, living on a farm helping to collect chicken eggs, Jane became curious as to where there was a hole large enough in the hen for an egg to fit through. After no one gave her a satisfactory answer, Jane hid out in a cramped henhouse for over four hours to learn the answer. When she came running back to the house to share her exciting new knowledge, her mother did not scold her even though she had called the police. Instead, Jane's mother sat with her in the grass and listened to the
Jane was also influenced by her war battered childhood's affect on her imagination. She grew up in England during the Second World War, and escaped the realities of her war-torn world though her imagination. Jane's imagination, as she read books such as Tarzan, The Jungle Book, and Dr. Doolittle, allowed her to turn these books into dreams. By about the age of ten, Jane dreamed of living among animals in Africa. This was an especially unusual aspiration at the time, because girls were not expected to want to go to the "Dark Continent" of Africa. The chimpanzees' habitat in the East African nation of Tanganyika, now known as Tanzania, is highly rugged and harsh. Many scientists were offended that Louis Leakey believed that someone, who was not only a woman, but had also never been to college, could be successful as a field researcher on such an assignment. Although this verbal criticism did nothing to discourage the eager young biologist, British authorities went one step further by actually intervening, not allowing the woman to take on the project, as they did not see Goodall fit for the assignment. The authorities finally gave in after her mother agreed to accompany Jane, now twenty-six years old, for the first three months. In 1965, National Geographic made a documentary of Jane Goodall, publicizing her first five years of research - research which seemed to suggest the opposite of nearly every previous idea of chimp behavior. In the same year, Jane became one of only a handful of people to ever be rewarded an honorary doctorate by England's Cambridge University without ever attending college. This recognition is notably significant because it shows the idiocy of the earlier prejudiced criticism of her abilities. Jane Goodall's works have made apparent the genetic similarities between Homo sapiens and chimps. Her studies alone have destroyed the prior ideas that chimpanzees are primitive apes and have shed light on the true behavior and lifestyle of chimps. Even over thirty
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Approximate Word count = 1353
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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