The woman who talked with chimps

Goodall trained to be a secretary and was presented to the Queen as a debutante, but when Rusty, her childhood dog, was killed (she would never have left England while he lived – as she told Peterson, "I was afraid he would think I had abandoned him"), she accepted a friend's invitation to visit her father's farm in Kenya.

There, in 1957, Goodall met eminent scientist Louis Leakey who recognized in the young, untrained, but bright and enthusiastic woman the traits that would make her an ideal animal researcher. Using his connections, Leakey arranged for her to become the recipient of a grant enabling her to spend a year observing wild chimpanzees in Tanzania.

An aging (and married) womanizer, Leakey was not without suspect motives (Goodall firmly rejected his overtures), but his instincts were nonetheless excellent. Using the methods she had developed as an animal-loving child in the English countryside, Goodall learned to commune with chimpanzees simply by sitting still and silently gaining their trust.

The few Western researchers who had previously studied monkeys in the wild hid themselves and discouraged contact. They also utterly scorned Goodall's habit of naming her subjects and considering them as individuals. (Previous studies identified monkeys only by number.)

But relying on her methods, Goodall made groundbreaking discoveries: that chimps eat meat, use tools, and have far more complex social interactions than had previously been suspected.

She eventually (with Leakey's help) was accepted for graduate studies at Cambridge University. With time, her astonishing expertise was recognized by the scientific community and eventually she became the world-renowned figure and animal activist she is today.

It's almost hard to remember now how narrow scientific views of animals were before Goodall. It's also fascinating to be reminded of the depth of her encounters with her subjects. The stories scattered throughout this book – of the chimp who seized leadership through technology (banging together water pails pilfered from Goodall's camp), of the adult male who died of a broken heart when he lost his mother, and of the chimp personalities Goodall came to know and often love are fascinating, heart wrenching, and illuminating.

Peterson's subtitle ("The Woman Who Redefined Man") overreaches just a bit. The case more emphatically made by this book is that Goodall redefined the way we think about animals. But that is no small accomplishment. For anyone interested in the record of human achievement – and the way common sense and intuition can shatter entrenched errors of thought – this is a story not to be missed.

• Marjorie Kehe is the Monitor's book editor. Send comments to Marjorie Kehe.

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