The author of many books and the winner of a multitude of awards, Jane Goodall pursues her interests with singular purpose and passion. In a realm where money and education are usually the deciding factors, she started with nothing but her natural intelligence and an open, curious mind. She went on to achieve the top recognition in her field and to become one of the most beloved figures in science today.
“Every individual matters and has a role to play in this life on earth. The chimpanzees teach us that it is not only human but also non-human beings who matter in the scheme of things.”
— Jane Goodall
Mary Leakey: Digging for Truth
Mary and Louis Leakey worked together in the search for the origins of man. Mary’s fabled perspicacity for digging and sifting was matched by her acerbic manner and love of good strong cigars. Of the famous duo, Mary was the one with the lucky spade. In 1948, Mary uncovered the skull and facial bones of the much ballyhooed hominid that came to be known as “the missing link.” In her trademark no-nonsense manner, Mary mused, “For some reason that skull caught the imagination.” In 1959 in the Olduvai Gorge of northern Tanzania, she discovered some teeth and the palate bone of the oldest ancestor of man up to that point. Upon finding other bones, they were able to determine that the five-foot, barrel-chested, small-brained, and browless hominid Zinjanthropus had walked upright a million years ago. Three years after Louis Leakey’s death in 1972, working widow Mary surpassed her own historical findings when she found the tracks of bipedal creatures 3.6 million years old, preserved in volcanic ash, and she later unearthed the jawbones of eleven other humanoids carbon-dated to 3.75 million years old! Mary passed the torch, or rather spade, to her son when she died in December of 1996 at the age of eighty-three. We owe a great deal of our new understanding of human evolution to Mary’s nose for old bones! “Her commitment to detail and perfection made my father’s career,” said son Richard E. Leakey. “He would not have been famous without her. She was much more organized and structured and much more of a technician.”
Dian Fossey: Gorillas and the Myth
Occupational therapist Dian Fossey felt a primal call to go to Africa, where she could study mountain gorillas. Taking out a personal loan, in 1963 she headed to the southern hemisphere, stopping by to say hello to Jane Goodall and the Leakeys, who encouraged her to do a gorilla field study. Traveling to Zaire (otherwise known as the “heart of darkness” to you Conrad fans), she found her research subjects—or rather sniffed out the odoriferous primates. “I was struck by the physical magnificence of the huge jet-black bodies blended against the green palette of the thick forest foliage.” Taking the “when in Rome” tack, she won the apes over by mimicking their moves, eventually living among fifty-one gorillas. Indeed, her observations proved that the mountain gorillas were actually peaceful vegetarians in great danger of extinction from poaching and habitat shrinkage.
Dian Fossey defended her gorillas and their turf bravely, earning the enmity of Rwandan tribespeople. She was devastated when her beloved gorilla Digit and two others were slaughtered in what seems to have been a threat to her in 1978. Fossey made a plea to the world to help her save the gorillas, greatly furthered by her book Gorillas in the Mist and the eponymous movie featuring Sigourney Weaver in the starring role. After teaching at Cambridge and raising cash for the “Digit fund” to help the mountain gorillas, Dian Fossey (called Nyiramachabelli by the Rwandans: “the old lady who lives in the forest without a man”) returned to stay with her gorilla families again, but her reunion was short-lived. She was found murdered on Christmas Eve of 1985 in the gorilla park habitat. Dian Fossey was buried beside Digit. Her murder has never been solved.
Petra Kelly: Green Knight
Environmental activist Petra Karin Kelly was interested in social issues from a very early age. Born in West Germany in 1947, she moved to Columbus, Georgia, with her mother and stepfather, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel John E. Kelly, in 1960, where she immediately became involved in the civil rights movement. Learning English quickly, during high school she had called a weekly radio program in current affairs. For college, she attended the school of International Service at American University where she studied world politics and graduated with honors in 1970. In addition to her studies, she was also very active in campus political movements—antiwar, antinuclear, and feminist, as a volunteer for Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign, and later for Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, with whom she maintained a friendship and correspondence. Her focus shifted when her sister Grace died from cancer in 1970. Petra Kelly created a citizen action group centered in Europe to study the connection between cancer and environmental pollution, eventually campaigning full-time for the Green Party she cofounded in 1979 and spearheading the Campaign for a Nuclear-Free Europe. In one year, she estimated she held more than 450 meetings in order to get the Greens elected to the German parliament, becoming the first German woman at the head of a political party.
Petra had an innate understanding of the inner workings of politics, and together with her fellow Green Party members, including her lover, Gert Bastian, was surprisingly successful in getting candidates into the governments not only of Germany, but throughout Europe, despite the Green Party’s radically pro-environment stances. As time went on, Petra’s actions became increasingly radical and drew more criticism from conservatives than ever before—she put together a “war crimes tribunal” at Nuremberg on the issue of nuclear weapons, and in 1983, staged a no-nukes demonstration that ended in her arrest, followed by another protest in Moscow. Petra led the Greens into more frays—blockading military bases all over Germany and leading protests in the U.S., Australia, and Great Britain.
Petra was an immensely charismatic leader, capturing the attention of thousands of people, especially young people, around the world. Her pure idealism and willingness to take personal risks captivated the youth of Europe. She received hundreds of letters each week offering support and was in high demand for lectures, articles, and books. Issues pertaining to children were especially close to her heart. She adopted a young Tibetan girl, Nima, and worked to educate the world about Tibetan genocide.
In 1991, Petra and her soulmate, Gert, were discovered dead in a suburb of Bonn by police, summoned by Kelly’s worried grandmother. They had both been shot and were in an advanced state of decomposition. Police have never been able to solve the double death, although the police believed it to be a double suicide. Others may have claimed it was a murder plot by anti-Green neo-Nazis who Gert had decried in newspaper articles. Police are basing the double-suicide theory on a powder burn on Gert’s hand and the lack of other fingerprints or footprints in the apartment, and they have produced background information on Gert Bastian as a former SS agent who had worked for the Nazis in his youth. Thirty years older than Petra, he had once been a virulent right-winger before doing a 180-degree turnaround to join the Green Party. Close friends recall Gert depressedly saying that the “new” Germany reminded him of the old Germany of his fascist youth.
Although we may never know what really happened to Petra Kelly, we do know that while she lived, she made important inroads to drawing the world’s attention to nuclear armaments, environmental destruction, children’s rights, and world peace. She lived entirely for the benefit of humankind.
Karen Silkwood: Chain Reaction
The story of Karen Silkwood is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. On November 13, 1974, she died in a car crash under suspicious circumstances after she very vocally criticized the safety of the plutonium fuels production plant she worked for in Crescent, Oklahoma. She had been