Jane Goodall was born in London, England, on April 3,1934, and grew up in Bournemouth on the southern coast of England. On her second birthday, her father bought her a stuffed, life-like toy chimpanzee named Jubilee in honor of a baby chimp born at the London Zoo. Her father's friends warned him that such a gift would cause nightmares. However, Jane loved the toy, and to this day Jubilee sits on a chair in her home in England.

Jane Goodall recalls her early interest in animals: "I have been interested in animals since before I can remember. When I was four years old, I stayed on a farm where I helped collect hen eggs. I became puzzled and asked those around me, ' Where is the hole big enough for the egg to come out?' When no one answered to my satisfaction, I hid in a small, stuffy henhouse for some hours to find out. When my mother saw me rushing towards the house, she noticed my excitement. Instead of scolding me for disappearing for so long (the family had even called the police!), she sat down and listened to me tell the wonderful story of how a hen lays an egg".

Jane's favorite books as a child were about animals, including The Story of Dr. Doolittle, The Jungle Book, and the Tarzan books. By the age of ten or twelve, Jane dreamed of going to Africa to live with animals. This was quite a radical aspiration in those days, as young girls did not think of going to the "Dark Continent" of Africa. But Jane had encouragement from her mother, who told her, "Jane, if you really want something, and if you work hard, take advantage of opportunities, and never give up, you will somehow find a way." Jane was determined to travel to Africa and live out her childhood dream to work with wildlife. She attended secretarial school, then got a job with a documentary film company in England until a school friend invited her to Kenya. She worked as a waitress to save money for the fare. Jane traveled to Kenya by boat at the age of 23, and it was there that she heard of Dr. Louis Leakley, a paleontologist and an anthropologist. Jane made an appointment to meet him and managed to answer many of his questions about Africa and its wildlife. Dr. Leakey hired her as an assistant, and they traveled, along with Mary Leakey, to Olduvai George on a fossil hunting expedition.

Jane reminisces about this time in her life at Olduvai Gorge: "I always remember the first time I held up in my hand the bone of a creature that had walked the earth million of years before. I had dug it up myself. A feeling of awe crept over me. I thought ' Once this creature stood here. It was alive, had flesh and hair. It had its own smell. It could feel hunger and thirst and pain. It could enjoy the morning sun.'"

After three months at Olduvai Gorge, they returned to Nairobi, Kenya, and Jane worked at the museum. Soon after, she and Louis began speaking about the possibility of studying a group of chimpanzees on the shores of Lake Tanganyika.

"I could have gone on at the museum. Or I could have learned a whole lot more about fossils and become a paleontologist. But both those careers had to do with dead animals. And I still wanted to work with living animals. My childhood dream was as strong as ever: Somehow I must find a way to watch free, wild animals living their own, undisturbed lives. I wanted to learn things that no one else knew, uncover secrets through patient observation. I wanted to come as close to talking with animals as I could." Louis decided Jane was the unique individual he was looking for to begin a study of wild chimpanzees on the shore of Lake Tanganyika. At first, British authorities resisted the idea of a young woman living among wild animals in Africa. They finally agreed when her mother volunteered to accompany her for the first three months. In July 1960, Jane and her mother, Vanne, arrived in Gombe National Park in what was then Tanganyika (now Tanzania).

In the beginning, studying the chimps of Gombe was not easy for Jane. The chimps fled from her in fear, and it took many months for her to get close to them. With determination, she searched the forest every day, deliberately trying not to get too close to the chimps. On many days Jane observed the chimps through binoculars from a peak overlooking the forest. Gradually the chimps became accustomed to her presence.

Jane uncovered many aspects of chimpanzee behavior during the first years at Gombe National Park. In October 1960, she observed a chimp using and making tools to fish for termites. This discovery challenged the definition current at that time: Man the Toolmaker. Because of her research, we now know that chimps hunt for meat and use tools. The longer the research continued, the more it became obvious how like us chimpanzees really are.

What some people believed would last only a few months has now become the longest field study of any animal species in their natural surroundings. Research at the Gombe continues to this day, mostly by a trained team of Tanzanians. Moral support from the Tanzanian government is a large reason for the longevity of the research at Gombe Stream Research Centre.