Seldom does a scientist come along who makes us fundamentally question our preconceived notions about who we are, what we are, where we came from and how the world works.

Newton and Kepler did it with their theories of Gravitation and Planetary Motion. Darwin did it with his Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. Einstein’s Relativity, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty, Rosalind Franklin’s structure of the DNA, all changed our understanding of the world at a fundamental level.

In the 1960s, in the Gombe National Park in Tanzania, a young zoologist, Jane Goodall, observed something that secured her an eternal spot in this elite list.

Jane Goodall had been sent to Gombe by the anthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey to study chimpanzees. She hadn’t been to university by then, because of which, under the frowning eyes of other academics of the time, she named the chimps she was observing. The frowning eyes stemmed from the belief that naming your subjects might cloud your objectivity. Having grown up with her pet dog Rusty, Goodall had zero doubts in her mind that animals possess a complex array of feelings and emotions. To her, giving them numbers or codes instead of names was to be willingly ignorant of their existence as conscious beings.

And so, she stood firm in her decision to name the subjects of her study.

One of the chimps she was observing was called David Greybeard, named quite literally for the handsome grey beard he sported. Mr Greybeard was special because he was the first chimpanzee from his troop, which Goodall was observing, to warm up to her. And even this was after many months of daily observations.

One day, during her routine observations, Goodall observed David Greybeard trying to eat termites out of a wooden log. Finding himself unable to get them out using just his fingers, he did something magnificent: he made makeshift tools from the small sticks lying around to pull the termites out from places his fingers couldn’t reach!

This was the first time a non-human animal had been observed to make tools. It might have been an apparently normal thing for chimpanzees to do, but for a human to see this behaviour was anything but normal.

‘Man the Tool-maker’ we were called. The fact that we could make tools out of raw materials to make tasks simpler was considered one of the defining characteristics of our species.

And now, here he was, a chimpanzee in a remote corner of Africa, just trying to have his lunch, oblivious to the fact that he’d just made us rethink the definition of the word ‘man’. It made us question the unique position we had assumed for ourselves in the natural world.

Dr Jane Goodall’s monumental 6-decade-long work in the Gombe National Park laid the foundation for basically all that we know about chimpanzees today. And yes, ‘Dr.’ because during this time she also became one of the elite few to get offered a PhD position before she had even completed her Bachelor’s.

Soon after, she became involved in wildlife conservation, advocating for a kinder and more hopeful world. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 to work on the protection of the Great Apes. Dr Goodall realised that the local communities around Tanzania and other parts of Africa were not exactly at fault for cutting down the forests. They were trying to survive by clearing areas for growing their food and selling charcoal and timber. If the JGI could not help them find alternative sources of income without harming the environment, there was little hope for the forests and the wildlife. Dr Goodall and her team didn’t want to simply march into these villages like arrogant white people. Instead, they formed a team with seven local Tanzanians who went around these villages asking people how the JGI could help. They worked with the communities and started micro-financing programs, scholarships for young girls, etc., that led to a sharp decline in the felling of trees.

Throughout her life, even till her very last day on 1st October, 2025, Dr Goodall travelled the world spreading her message of hope and kindness for the natural world. For her, hope was not a passive thing, like a wish. Its that little shining light in your heart you carry that guides you. Hope is what propels you into action, gives you a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Hopelessness, on the other hand, sucks you into the vacuum of despair, where nothing ever grows.

I have hope. Hope that I can make a difference, however small, towards conserving wildlife. Hope that there are thousands of others like me, better than me.

Today, I salute Dr Jane Goodall. And hope that I can become even 1% of the person she was.

Today, more than ever, I urge you to be curious, and stay kind.