--- description: July 14, 1960: Jane Goodall arrives at the Gombe National Park in Tanzania to begin studying chimpanzees in the wild title: Jane Goodall: How She Didn't Overcame Her Lack of a College Degree image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4c42435e796fe1ca/69885a1b0b72e33a396e4d76/chimp.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [History](/section/history/) ## History Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # How Jane Goodall Made a Scientific Breakthrough Without a College Degree by [Jennifer Latson](/author/jennifer-latson/) ## Jennifer Latson Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jul 14, 2015 6:30 PM CUT  Jane Goodall at the National Zoo in Washington D.C. with the zoo's 11-month-old chimpanzee Lulu, Feb. 29, 1964. Jane Goodall at the National Zoo in Washington D.C. with the zoo's 11-month-old chimpanzee Lulu, Feb. 29, 1964.Popperfoto/Getty Images by [Jennifer Latson](/author/jennifer-latson/) ## Jennifer Latson Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jul 14, 2015 6:30 PM CUT When Jane Goodall arrived at Tanzania’s Gombe National Park on this day, July 14, in 1960, she was not, strictly speaking, a scientist. The anthropologist Louis Leakey had sent her there to study the social lives of chimpanzees, largely on the strength of Goodall’s passion and curiosity about the animals. But she lacked a college degree, and she took a decidedly unscientific approach to her research. Instead of assigning numbers to the chimps she observed, she named them: Fifi, Freud and Frodo in one family; Goblin, Gremlin and Glitter in another. It was the fulfillment of Goodall’s dream, from age 8, to “to go live in Africa, spend time with animals, and write books about them,” [according to a later TIME story about her](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,703596,00.html "undefined"). But there was nothing childish about the way she carried out her work. In the first year of a study that would ultimately span decades, she made the groundbreaking discovery that chimps made and used tools, which until that moment had been viewed as an exclusively human ability. The anthropology community was stunned by Goodall’s finding that, “like men,” as [TIME put it](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,877409,00.html "undefined"), “chimpanzees are technological animals.” They chewed leaves to make sponges and sopped water out of hollow branches. They stripped grass stems to use as probes for digging termites out of their mounds. [Leakey summarized](http://www.janegoodall.org/janes-story "undefined") the significance of Goodall’s discovery: “Now we must redefine ‘tool,’ redefine ‘man,’ or accept chimpanzees as humans.” Goodall (who eventually earned a PhD in ethology at Cambridge University, where she was one of the few to do so without first earning a bachelor’s degree, [per PBS](http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/jane-goodalls-wild-chimpanzees-jane-goodalls-story/1911/ "undefined")) also stunned her fellow anthropologists and ethologists with the finding that chimps lived complex emotional lives within highly sophisticated social structures. As TIME [explained](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,877409,00.html "undefined") in 1971: --- > “” --- And while Goodall preferred to spend her time in the company of chimps, her efforts to protect their habitat forced her increasingly into contact with those other sophisticated, tool-using primates: humans. She recognized that getting humankind on board with conservation was the key to preserving the earth for all species — and that people could change the world without going to live in Africa, spending time with the animals and writing books about them. “The lifelong introvert overcame her shyness ‘out of necessity,’” TIME wrote in 2004\. “Hearing few voices of optimism, she has raised hers, now spending 300 days a year traveling, lecturing about her research, and telling people, in her gentle, teacherly voice, ‘to keep up their hope, to feel that what they do can make a difference.’” **_Read a 2002 column that Goodall wrote for TIME, here in the archives_**: [The Power of One](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,1003125-1,00.html "undefined") ### LIFE With the Astrochimps: Early Stars of the Space Race  LIFE cover, Feb. 10, 1961\. Ham the Chimpanzee in the space capsule after returning from the Mercury Redstone 2 space flight. HENRY BURROUGHS  Ham the astrochimp after his historic 1961 suborbital flight. Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  The rocket sled at Holloman Air Force Base, 1960. Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Astrochimp in training, 1960. Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. "A hug and a pat are exchanged in a moment of fond reassurance." Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Astrochimp in training. Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A chimp is strapped into a "couch" rigged with all manner of monitoring equipment during a test prior to Ham's January 1961 flight. Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Astrochimp in training, 1960. Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  An astrochimp in training learns to press buttons in order to reward himself with banana pellets, 1961. Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  An astrochimp learns to handle equipment at Holloman AFB, 1960. Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Astrochimps in training, 1960. Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Astrochimp in training at Holloman Air Force Base, 1960. Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Ham the astrochimp, seemingly mugging for the camera, 1961. Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Astrochimp in training at Holloman Air Force Base, 1960. Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A chimp and a handler look at X-rays during Mercury training at Holloman Air Force Base, 1960. Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Astrochimps and their handlers, Holloman AFB, 1960. Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Holloman Air Force Base, 1961. Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Astrochimp at Holloman Air Force Base, 1961. Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Astrochimp, 1960. Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Astrochimps, 1960. Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Ham the astrochimp, 1961. Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Ham the astrochimp and his handler, Cape Canaveral, Florida, 1961. Ralph Crane—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Ham the astrochimp, 1961. Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Ham the astrochimp after his 1961 suborbital flight. Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. Ham the astrochimp is escorted by a human friend after his suborbital space flight, January 1961. Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A Mercury space capsule carries Ham the astrochimp into space on Jan. 31, 1961\. His flight lasted 16 minutes and 39 seconds. Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3949985/jane-goodall-college-history/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3949985/jane-goodall-college-history/"},"headline":"How Jane Goodall Made a Scientific Breakthrough Without a College Degree","datePublished":"2015-07-14T18:30:42.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:02:36.003Z","description":"July 14, 1960: Jane Goodall arrives at the Gombe National Park in Tanzania to begin studying chimpanzees in the wild","url":"https://time.com/3949985/jane-goodall-college-history/","keywords":["animals","Science topic"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4c42435e796fe1ca/69885a1b0b72e33a396e4d76/chimp.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jennifer Latson","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/jennifer-latson/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4c42435e796fe1ca/69885a1b0b72e33a396e4d76/chimp.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Jane Goodall And Lulu","caption":"Jane Goodall And Lulu","creditText":"Popperfoto/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3949985/jane-goodall-college-history/","name":"How Jane Goodall Made a Scientific Breakthrough Without a College Degree"}}]}] ```