Dr Jane Goodall to speak at UCT

In celebration of her 80th year, Goodall will be sharing her life story at this year's first VC Open Lecture on Thursday, 6 February 2014, at 19h00 at the Baxter Theatre. Her lecture will be live-streamed on UCT's home page.

Her research into the behaviour of chimpanzees began in Tanzania in the 1960s, and ever since then, it has changed scientific thinking about the relation between human beings and other mammals.

"As a small child in England, I had this dream of going to Africa," she once told the press, "We didn't have any money and I was a girl, so everyone except my mother laughed at it. When I left school, there was no money for me to go to university, so I went to secretarial college and got a job."

But her dream later came to fruition, and today her many honours include the French Legion of Honour, the Medal of Tanzania, and Japan's prestigious Kyoto Prize. In 2002 she was appointed as a UN Messenger of Peace and in 2004 she was named a Dame of the British Empire.

In 1977, she established the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), which today is still recognised for its innovative, community-centred conservation and development programmes. In South Africa, the JGI SA Chimpanzee Eden is home to chimpanzees that have been displaced from their natural habitats in Central Africa.