Andy Manis
Jane Goodall at a podium holding a stuffed chimpanzee toy.
Jane Goodall defied gender roles to become the world’s leading expert on chimpanzees.
The free tickets to see ethologist Jane Goodall speak in the Wisconsin Union’s Distinguished Lecture series were all claimed by students within 90 minutes of being offered. The ticketing website, strained, slowed almost to a standstill.
“I just kept hitting ‘refresh, refresh,’” says sophomore Brett Gorman, in the ticket holder line before the talk. “I was texting my friends, ‘What should I do?’”
An hour before start time, the line for ticket holders starts at Memorial Union’s Shannon Hall theater — on the lake side — runs down a long hallway toward Langdon Street, back across the first floor, turns at the other end of the building, snakes past the ice cream, through the Strada cafeteria (“Are you waiting for food?” “No, this is the line”), and into the Rathskeller nearly to the beer taps.
What brought them all here?
“I mean, it’s Jane Goodall,” says Elizabeth Clawson, a graduate student in neurobiology. Others are similarly awe-struck: “She’s a legend.” “I’ve been a fan my whole life.” “She’s why I’m in science.” “I remember learning about her in middle school.”
Goodall appears to be an enduring pillar of the middle school curriculum. I remember too, sixth grade, watching the National Geographic films featuring a young ponytailed Jane during her first years at Gombe, in Kenya, crouching in the underbrush, notating chimpanzee behavior, the first person to study humans’ closest relative, approaching ever closer, calmly narrating her experience. There is something about her demeanor — thoughtful, unflappable, kind — that sticks.
Back at the doors of the theater, Lynn Richason is the first person in the other line, of those who don’t have tickets. She rented a car to drive to Madison from St. Paul, Minnesota, and is staying in an AirBnB. Seeing Goodall has been a “lifelong dream,” says Richason, who finds the ethologist an inspiration with her “non-confrontational” approach and emphasis on conservation. Richason volunteers at her local science museum and has worked on several dinosaur digs, though her career is in marketing. She wants to volunteer at Gombe someday — “that’s on my bucket list.”
Linda Falkenstein
Girls in the rush line waiting for Goodall lecture.
Leah, left, Sofia and Gabriela Rivera in the rush line.
Farther down the rush line, sisters Leah, Gabriela and Sofia Rivera — 10, 9, and 5, respectively — are barely able to contain their excitement. They’re wearing matching khaki shirts, similar to ones young Jane wore in the bush. “We’ve read about her,” they explain, talking over each other, and all three carry stuffed chimps. Gabriela has a drawing she did of Jane. They also brought their Jane Goodall Barbie, part of a series of women in science Barbies that Mattel has introduced. They’re with their mom, Kelly, who works in tech and homeschools them. “Women in STEM are a big topic with us,” says Kelly. They were initially in the wrong line and Kelly hopes they make it in. (They do.)
Goodall takes the stage shortly after 7 p.m. Nearly 90, in some ways she seems unchanged from when she arrived at Gombe in 1960; the ponytail is just silver now. She is thin without looking gaunt, fragile without seeming frail. She begins by explaining she needs to “reconcile the Jane that seems to have become an icon” with the one who is “just me.” She asks the crowd to see her as the just-me Jane. “Is that a deal?”
She describes her supportive mother who nurtured her love of animals and books, yet there was “no thought of becoming a scientist.” That was too dangerous and the sentiment in the late 1950s was “you’re just a girl.” The family had no money to send her to university, but her mother scraped together enough to put her through a secretarial course, which she describes as “awfully boring” but proved to be her entree into what she was determined to do: go to Africa. Goodall paints a picture of what is essentially a vanished world, both Kenya and she herself on the verge of independence.
When her mentor, archaeologist Louis Leakey, got her into a Ph.D. program without her having a B.A., she was told that she “shouldn’t have given the chimpanzees names.” But it seems unlikely that her research would have captured the imaginations of so many without David Greybeard, Mike and Flo.
These days Goodall is no longer out in the field “climbing steep hills.” Through the Jane Goodall Institute she is “fighting hopelessness in young people,” working for jobs in Africa, education for girls, and raising consciousness about human impact on the planet, including arguing for a plant-based diet.
“You roll up your sleeves. You get out there. And you do something.”
Tickets to the March 26 event: All 1,015 claimed within the first 90 minutes of UW–Madison student early access
Livestream viewership: More than 2,500
First National Geographic film: Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees, 1965
Year Goodall graduated with a Ph.D. from Cambridge University: 1966
Among the chimp behaviors documented by Goodall: Kissing, holding hands, tool-making
Where you can buy a “Girls Just Wanna Do Science” Jane Goodall T-shirt: shop.janegoodall.org
