In “Primates,” Jim Ottaviani and Maris Wicks present the stories of Fossey, Goodall, and Galdikas in a graphic novel that draws heavily from the scientists’ lives and work. In later years, Fossey went to Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) and Rwanda to study mountain gorillas, and Galdikas established a camp in Borneo to study orangutans.
When the young Goodall sought out Leakey in 1957, he dispatched her to observe chimpanzees in Tanzania. And women, Leakey was convinced, would be better observers of their behavior than men. He saw a need for long-term observations of living apes. To understand the origin of our species, Leakey decided, fossils were not enough. The lives of these three women were intertwined, thanks to the patronage they all gained from the Kenyan paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey. And no women have more gripping stories than Dian Fossey, Biruté Galdikas and Jane Goodall, who in their respective ways profoundly changed our understanding of the great apes. They return with their own stories, which can inspire girls and boys alike.
Women regularly head out to sea or into jungles to make new discoveries. Biology has changed since the days of Humboldt and Darwin in that respect: today, the majority of Ph.D.’s awarded in biology in the United States go to women.
Humboldt’s “Personal Narrative,” Darwin later wrote, “stirred up in me a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science.” At age 22, he embarked on his own voyage around the world, out of which he would develop his theory of evolution.įor a long time, such life-changing stories were mostly the stories of men. He read passages aloud to his professors and learned Spanish so that he could follow in Humboldt’s footsteps. Alexander von Humboldt - the most famous naturalist of the early 19th century - chronicled his epic expeditions, between 17, in his “Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent.” When a nature-loving student at Cambridge named Charles Darwin read the book, it changed his life. The stories of scientists create new scientists.
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