In 1957, a 23-year-old Jane Goodall saved up enough money out of secretarial school and traveled from England to a friend’s farm in Kenya. While there, she met paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey, who offered her a job at a nearby natural history museum. It did not take long for Leakey to realize that Goodall’s passion for animals, her elevated patience, high energy and bravery would make her a great fit for studying wild chimpanzees.

He sent Goodall to the Gombe Stream Game Reserve in July 1960. She was accompanied by her mother because the British government that controlled Tanginika, or the mainland part of Tanzania today, said a young woman could not go into the African bush alone.

Within months of her arrival, the 26-year-old Goodall, without a college degree, became the first person t

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