The aim of science is to illuminate the mysteries of nature and discover the elemental truths pulsating sublime and indifferent beneath the starry skin of the universe. The aim of art is to give us a language for wresting meaning from the truth and living with the mystery. Creativity in both is a style of noticing, of attending to the world more closely in order to love it more deeply, of seeing everything more and more whole — a word that shares its Latin root with “holy.”

This is why the greatest visionaries bend their gaze beyond the horizon of their discipline and of their era’s givens to take in the vista of life as a totality of being. How inseparable Einstein’s passion for the violin was from his physics and Goethe’s passion for morphology from his poetry, how difficult to tell where Kepler the mind ends and Kepler the body begins.

There are few visionaries in the history of our species who have changed our understanding of nature and our place in it more profoundly than Jane Goodall (April 3, 1934–October 1, 2025) — something she was able to do in large part because she never saw science as a walled garden separate from the wilderness of life. Formed by her love of books since childhood, she placed the raw material of literature — compassion — at the center of her scientific work, drawing on her passion for artistic creativity to make her revelatory discovery of chimpanzee tool use — that selfsame impulse to bend the world to the will that sparked human creativity when we descended from the trees to the caves to invent fire and figurative art.

The essence of Goodall’s integrated, holistic view of life comes ablaze in a passage from a letter to a friend found in Africa in My Blood: An Autobiography in Letters (public library) — that magnificent record of how she turned her childhood dream into reality. The day before New Year’s Eve 1958, visiting her family in London for the first time since her departure to Africa twenty months earlier, she writes:

It is lovely to be in an artistic atmosphere again. I realize now, more than ever before, that I can never live wholly without it. It feels so heavenly to be able to just sit in front of the fire & talk for hours — of cabbages & kings — poetry, literature, art, music, philosophy, religion. It’s wonderful, marvellous, terrific… I will stop now, because I have to wash my hair.

Shampoo, song, and science — all of it the stuff of life, intertwined and integrated, lest we forget that only an integrated human nature can begin to apprehend nature itself — that “great chain of causes and effects” in which “no single fact can be considered in isolation,” in the lovely words of Alexander von Humboldt, who knew that artists too are all the greater for taking a passionate interest in the realities of nature subject to science. It was Humboldt who first conceived of nature as a system, who saw “the unity and harmony of this stupendous mass of force and matter.” It was Jane Goodall whose science revealed that kinship is the software the system runs on, and whose life reminds us that just the kinship within a creature — the unity and harmony between all parts and passions of a person — is as essential to being fully alive as the kinship between creatures.

When I caught up with Dr. Jane Goodall in 2023, she was visiting the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies in Colorado, where she gave three lectures to local school children on behalf of the Jane Goodall Institute and her youth organization Roots & Shoots. It was early autumn in Colorado, and the last hummingbirds of summer dashed from flower to flower before embarking on their fall migration. The animal expert, who admits to not only loving birds, but all living things, was in her element among the wild landscape.

Then 89 and still traveling more than 300 days per year for in-person events, Dr. Goodall was brilliant as ever. As we mourn her Oct. 1 passing, T+L is taking a look back at our 2023 interview with the trailblazing zoologist:

Travel + Leisure: I’m interested in your thoughts on the role animal and conservation tourism can play in developing nations, particularly those in Africa. How can tourism benefit local ecosystems and resident wildlife? 

Jane Goodall: Well, it’s got two sides to it. The main answer is, how is the place tourism managed? That’s the absolute key. In many countries, the government finds that people will pay to go and see, for example, mountain gorillas in Rwanda. So the researchers there said, ‘No more than six people at a time, and they can’t stay more than an hour.’ Well, the governments there think, ‘Okay, we get all this money for six. Now we’ll map it to twelve.’ These areas are getting too many tourists and it’s affecting the animals. That’s killing the goose that lays the golden egg. 

Is there a solution? Can one be a responsible traveler?

I don’t have the solution, and sometimes tourism exploits the animals terribly. But tourism, well-managed, is very important for various reasons. One, it has a major effect on the people on the tour, especially if they have a knowledgeable local guide who knows not only about lions and elephants, but birds and maybe butterflies, so that even if you don’t see the big things, you can be entertained. And the benefits the country gets means the national parks get more money, too. There’s a lot of employment in the parks and nearby hospitality — at hotels and restaurants — which provides lots and lots of jobs. The local people begin to see a value to the animals. 

You’re right. Being in the place and actually seeing the animals in their habitat with your own eyes makes you want to fight to protect it.

There’s no question about it. When you look into a chimpanzee’s eyes, a gorilla’s eyes, or an elephant’s, it changes you. 

Part of your relentless worldwide schedule is to reassure people that hope for the environment is not lost, and that even individual actions can make a difference.

Individuals can do their part even if it’s just not using pesticide on their lawns or supporting places for hummingbirds or bees. It can be that simple. Not eating meat or not eating meat one day a week to start with. Industrialized meat is bad for you, it’s horrible for the animals, and it’s destroying the environment. So even if everybody on the planet who’s still eating meat stopped eating it for just one day and then two days, it would make a huge difference. 

Your lectures lately focus on the idea that there is hope for a better world. I share in your optimism, but sometimes it feels like things get darker and darker. What drives you to keep going?

I wouldn’t keep going if I didn’t know that going to a place makes a difference. And I only know that because people tell me. I get letters saying ‘I’d given up. But after your lecture, I promise you I’ll do my bit.’ Hundreds of young people have written to say joining Roots & Shoots was the best thing [they] ever did. Even in Tanzania, a 12-year-old boy said, ‘Until Roots & Shoots, I didn’t know animals had feelings. Now, I’ll never hurt another animal as long as I live.’ That’s amazing. 

Are you still surprised this is the way your life has unfolded? The amazing legacy you’ve been able to create?

The only way I can cope with this craziness is by saying, well, there’s two Janes, this one, I’m talking to you, perfectly normal, and then there’s the icon that was created by National Geographic and so on. I go through an airport with dark glasses and my hair down, and still people recognized me. So I thought, well, okay, the only thing to do is to make use of it, so I’ll use it. 

And after, when – if – you finally decide to stop traveling, who will be the next Jane Goodall? Do you think that the next Jane will be one of these children who have heard your message? 

I think there’ll be a lot of Jane Goodalls springing up. I mean, nobody can be me. I’ve lived 90 years. You can’t expect a child to know all the things that you learn in 90 years. But passion, commitment, dedication, children today have all of these. Some children are doing amazing things. They give me hope that that nature can come back if you give it a chance, even totally destroyed places. And animals on the brink can be given another chance. 

Dr. Jane Goodall
Dead at 91

Published October 1, 2025 11:05 AM PDT