The first time I met Dr. Jane Goodall was backstage at Southern Methodist University in 1996, when she signed my copy of one of her children’s books. It would be the first of my three encounters with Jane—each of them memorialized by an inscription she wrote to me in that volume, The Chimpanzee Family Book.

Earlier that evening, she had invited me and the rest of the audience to join her, symbolically, atop a rugged trail in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania.

We all followed Jane intently as she cupped her hands to her mouth. Her eyes grew big, and out came a hair-raising crescendo: “Hooo / hhaaa whooaa / oooo whoooaaa / oooo whoooaaa / oooo whoooaaa / oooo!”

It was a long-distance greeting call—the pant hoot—and it meant “hello” in chimpanzee. It was Jane’s way of welcoming her audience, us Homo sapiens.

The Cornell community, and the citizens of the world, lost a true environmental hero with her passing on October 1, 2025. She was a pioneering scientist, a messenger of hope, and a modern-day Dr. Dolittle.

In so many ways, Jane was the face of conservation and caring for wild animals everywhere, and for the human communities that live closest to them.

It will come as no surprise that she had a profound impact on the Cornell campus: first as a distinguished A.D. White Professor-at-Large, and later as my collaborator in a unique engaged learning and research program, Partnerships for the Planet, that continues to inspire undergraduate and professional students. She was particularly fond of the appointment, because she enjoyed the robust discussions with bright, highly motivated students. (And Dr. Leakey had held the same title from 1966–72.)

“She was particularly fond of the appointment as an A.D. White Professor, because she enjoyed the robust discussions with bright, highly motivated students.”

In fall 1997, Jane delivered a [Professors-at-Large] lecture titled “Chimpanzees, Humans, and Habitats” to a packed Bailey Hall. During her three days on campus, she participated in large undergraduate courses, spoke at a luncheon hosted by Ecology House, and met with many enthusiastic students and faculty.

On another [Professors-at-Large] visit, she spoke eloquently at a campus Earth Day celebration; she finished her tenure by sharing life lessons to a capacity crowd in Sage Chapel for “A Service of Hope.”

This fall, just a week before her death, Jane gathered with Cornellians at a natural history gallery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side to commemorate our enduring partnership. It would be both a celebration and a fond farewell.

Following a touching tribute by [University] President Mike Kotlikoff, Jane began her story.

In a voice both calming and full of a warrior’s determination, she recounted her life, including the powerful connections to the Cornell community. She smiled brightly as she spoke of her years as an A.D. White Professor.

And then she paused and said with a giggle: “I truly was a professor-at-large, as I would bounce around from the forests of Gombe to visit Cornell for a few days to give talks about chimpanzee behavior and meet with curious students … then I would be off again on lecture tours around the world.”

The missions of Cornell and of the Jane Goodall Institute are closely aligned: for the University, “to do the greatest good” and for the Institute to do “good for all.” They each, in their own way, give a voice to every human, every animal, and every community; together we strive “to do the greatest good for all.”

Jane’s last message to me—the third penned inside the book—was prophetic: “Together we can make this a better world for ALL life. We must. Love, Jane.”

Full story published in Cornellians (October 2025)