Dr. Jane Goodall, the pioneering primatologist, chimpanzee researcher and animal-welfare advocate, died of cardiac arrest, TMZ reports, citing her death certificate from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner.
Goodall’s death was announced Oct. 1 by The Jane Goodall Institute, which revealed Goodall passed away of natural causes while on a speaking tour in California. She was 91.
Born on April 3, 1934, in London, Goodall would later say that a toy chimpanzee she received as a child was the start of her fascination and love for the animal, a toy she kept throughout her life. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden early this year after being a presence on television for decades.
She was the subject of Jane, a 2017 feature-length documentary that was nominated for seven primetime Emmys and won two, for Brett Morgen’s directing and for cinematography. It also won a PGA Award and was named Best Documentary by the National Board of Review, among many other accolades.
Goodall was 26 in 1960 when she traveled from native England to what is now Tanzania and ventured into the little-known world of wild chimpanzees. It was the start of more than 60 years of groundbreaking work in a male-dominated field. She emphasized the need to protect chimps from extinction while redefining species conservation to include the needs of local people and the environment.
Later she became a familiar face on intercontinental television. Her hundreds of TV appearances over the decades began with guesting on The David Frost Show in 1970. Three years later, she was featured in the TV documentary special Jane Goodall and the World of Animal Behavior: The Wild Dogs of Africa. Other specials would include Jane Goodall: A Life in the Wild (1990) and Jane Goodall: My Life with the Chimpanzees (1995). Just between 2004 and 2005, she appeared in three TV specials: Jane Goodall’s State of the Great Ape, Jane Goodall’s Return To Gombe and Jane Goodall: When Animals Talk.
More recently, she teamed with Leonardo DiCaprio on Howl, a live-action film about a dog and wolf’s survival journey told from the animals’ perspective.