![]() ![]() When the photo was taken in 1964, Goodall was immersed in life at Gombe, beginning to understand the chimps she was studying and slowly building up her observations of their behaviour. "During the last third of the 20th Century, Dian Fossey, Birute Galdikas, Cheryl Knott, Penny Patterson, and many more women have followed her," he wrote in the Jane Goodall Institute's biography of the primatologist."Indeed, women now dominate long-term primate behavioural studies worldwide." (Read more: The woman who redefined mankind). ![]() Gilbert M Grosvenor, former chair of the National Geographic Society, has likewise argued that "Goodall's trailblazing path for other women primatologists is arguably her greatest legacy". There then was a succession of high profile women doing this sort of work." "Up until then, it had been a pretty male-dominated environment. "She was a young woman saying that women are equally well-placed to do really first class research in the field. But this photograph helped people recognise the importance of a female perspective within the scientific research community, he says. Mark Wright, director of science at conservation charity WWF, says Goodall was "a real trailblazer" in many ways. Until then, tool use like this was believed to distinguish humans from all other animals. Goodall was the first person to notice that chimpanzees were stripping down stiff blades of grass, then sticking them into holes in termite mounds to catch and eat these insects. ![]() "Thus opened up a whole new way of understanding who animals are and showed that we humans are a part of and not separated from the rest of the animal kingdom." The photo, along with van Lawick's documentary film People of the Forest: The Chimps of Gombe, "forced science to abandon the idea that humans were the only sentient beings with personalities, minds and emotions" says Goodall, adding that she was taught this as a student at Cambridge University in 1962. That same year, National Geographic released Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees, the first of many documentaries showcasing Goodall's research. Another photo of Goodall studying the Gombe chimpanzees was on the front cover and published as part of van Lawick's photo series titled "New Discoveries Among Africa's Chimpanzees". The photo, taken in 1964, was first published in National Geographic magazine in December 1965. "When I saw it, though I did not realise it would become iconic, it did make me think of Michelangelo's painting of God reaching out to Man." "It was couple of months or more before there was a safe way to send exposed rolls to the Geographic for processing, and then another wait while they sent the prints back to Kigoma," she recalls. In the photo, Goodall is shown crouching down and reaching out with her right arm to Flint, the first chimp to be born at Gombe after Goodall's arrival, as he extends his left arm up towards her.Īs Goodall tells BBC Future, this was long before the era of digital photography, so she had to wait a while before she could see the printed images. But it was in 1964 that he took what became an iconic photograph of Goodall with an infant chimp known as Flint. Her late husband, Dutch photographer Hugo van Lawick, went to Gombe in 1962 where he took thousands of photographs of Goodall. One image taken of Goodall during this time captured her fresh approach, challenged the scientific norm and has become one of the world's most recognisable photos. Controversially at the time, she defied convention by giving these chimps names instead of numbers. Previously a secretarial student without an undergraduate degree in science, Goodall says she observed her wild subjects with an open mind and without preconceptions. Here, in what is now Gombe Stream National Park, her ground-breaking scientific research into chimpanzee behaviour began. On 14 July 1960, 26-year-old Jane Goodall arrived by boat to the shores of Lake Tanganyika, Tanzania. ![]()
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