Many experts objected to Leakey's selection of Goodall because she had no formal scientific education and lacked even a general college degree. At his prompting, she agreed to attempt such a study.

Leakey believed that Goodall had the proper temperament to endure long-term isolation in the wild. Few studies of chimpanzees had been successful either the size of the safari frightened the chimps, producing unnatural behaviors, or the observers spent too little time in the field to gain comprehensive knowledge. He had a particular interest in the chimpanzee, the second most intelligent primate. Leakey believed that a long-term study of the behavior of higher primates would yield important evolutionary information. Additionally, Goodall was sent to study the vervet monkey, which lives on an island in Lake Victoria. Leakey hired her as a secretary and invited her to participate in an anthropological dig at the now-famous Olduvai Gorge, a site rich in fossilized prehistoric remains of early ancestors of humans. Through other friends, she soon met the famed anthropologist Louis Leakey, then curator of the Coryndon Museum in Nairobi. Learning from Anthropologist Louis LeakeyĪt the invitation of a childhood friend, Goodall visited South Kinangop, Kenya, in the late 1950s. She went on to find employment as a secretary at Oxford University, and in her spare time also worked at a London-based documentary film company to finance a long-anticipated trip to Africa. Goodall attended the Uplands private school, receiving her school certificate in 1950 and a higher certificate in 1952. From an early age, she dreamed of traveling to Africa to observe exotic animals in their natural habitats. In her leisure time, she observed native birds and animals, making extensive notes and sketches, and read widely in the literature of zoology and ethology. Goodall's fascination with animal behavior began in early childhood. Along with her sister, Judy, Goodall was reared in London and Bournemouth, England. Goodall was born on April 3, 1934, in London, England, to Mortimer Herbert Goodall, a businessperson and motor-racing enthusiast, and the former Margaret Myfanwe Joseph, who wrote novels under the name Vanne Morris Goodall.

A highly respected member of the world scientific community, she advocates for ecological preservation through the Jane Goodall Institute.

She immersed herself in their lives, bypassing more rigid procedures to make discoveries about primate behavior that have continued to shape scientific discourse. Jane Goodall set out to Tanzania in 1960 to study wild chimpanzees.

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