World-renowned English primatologist Jane Goodall will speak at Brown Oct. 19, representatives of the Brown Lecture Board told The Herald.
“Jane has polled consistently highly in the past Lecture Board polls we’ve had, so we knew that there was a lot of student interest in bringing her to Brown,” said Allison Schaefer ’17, vice president of campus relations for Lecture Board. “In the past it hasn’t worked out logistically but luckily this fall our schedules aligned nicely and we are really excited to have the opportunity for her to come and speak to Brown.”
Beginning in 1960 at the age of 26, Goodall spent 55 years in Tanzania studying chimpanzees, and her research on their family structures and social interactions has made her a celebrity and foremost expert on the species. She is also an outspoken activist on nonviolence and environmental conservation and serves as a United Nations Messenger of Peace.
Goodall, now 81, got her start in the field from famed archaeologist Louis Leakey, who wanted to prove the evolutionary link between the great apes and early hominids.
Goodall’s revolutionary discoveries about chimpanzees upturned many conventional beliefs about the species. She famously discovered that chimpanzees make and use tools, and she observed them killing and eating meat, disproving the popular belief that they were primarily vegetarian animals.
Since her days in the field, Goodall has founded the Jane Goodall Institute, which is committed to raising awareness and improving understanding about great apes, conservation and sustainable living, largely by focusing on education opportunities. To that end, Goodall also founded the Roots and Shoots program, a global service organization where young people empower their community through sustainable living projects, such as community gardens and beekeeping.
She will speak in Salomon 101 on Oct. 19 at 7 p.m. The online ticket lottery will be held at 12 p.m. Oct. 13–15.
ADVERTISEMENT
