Alongside Goodall and Dian Fossey, who was the third scientist in The Trimates?

Alongside Goodall and Dian Fossey, Biruté Galdikas was the third scientist in The Trimates.

The Trimates—also called Leakey’s Angels—were three women recruited or supported by paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey to study great apes in their natural environments. Jane Goodall researched chimpanzees at Gombe in Tanzania, Dian Fossey studied mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and Galdikas investigated orangutans in Indonesian Borneo.

Galdikas began her long-term orangutan fieldwork in 1971 at Tanjung Puting Reserve. Leakey and the National Geographic Society helped establish her research base, later known as Camp Leakey. Her work greatly expanded scientific knowledge of orangutan behavior, reproduction, ecology, and social life.

A common mix-up is treating The Trimates as a general list of famous female primatologists. It specifically refers to Goodall, Fossey, and Galdikas, while researchers such as Anne Pusey and Mary Leakey played important roles in related scientific work but were not members of this trio.