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Events on Wednesday 1 October 2025 3
1934 – 2025Jane Goodall -- the woman who redefined our relationship with animalsDame Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall (3 April 1934 - 1 October 2025) was a British primatologist, ethologist and conservationist whose groundbreaking research on wild chimpanzees in Tanzania transformed scientific understanding of the relationship between humans and animals. Working without formal scientific training, she discovered that chimpanzees use tools, eat meat, and have complex social and emotional lives -- findings that challenged the very definition of what it means to be human. She spent the last three decades of her life as a tireless global advocate for conservation, animal welfare and environmental action. She died of natural causes aged 91 while on a speaking tour in California.
2025 – 2026Final ExhibitionsMajor exhibitions of her work opened at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland, and Museum Ludwig in Cologne. A posthumous exhibition was already scheduled to open at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in September 2026.
2025Jane Goodall dies in Beverly HillsJane Goodall died in her sleep on 1 October 2025 in Beverly Hills, California, while on a speaking tour in the United States. She was 91. Her cause of death was cardiopulmonary arrest. The Jane Goodall Institute said: 'Today is a profoundly sad day for the planet. But Jane's light continues in all of us.' She had recently spoken at New York Climate Week 2025, still carrying Jubilee, the toy chimpanzee she had been given as a child.