In 1958, Goodall studied primate anatomy with which British anatomist?

In 1958, Jane Goodall studied primate anatomy with the British anatomist John Napier.

The training followed Goodall’s meeting with paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey in Kenya. Leakey believed that studying living great apes could illuminate the behavior of early human ancestors, and he encouraged Goodall to prepare for field research. He arranged for her to study primate behavior with Osman Hill and primate anatomy with John Napier in London.

Napier was a leading British anatomist and primatologist. His work covered the structure, evolution, and classification of primates, and he later helped establish primatology as a more organized scientific field in Britain. His instruction gave Goodall useful anatomical background before she began her landmark chimpanzee observations.

This episode is sometimes blurred with Goodall’s later academic work. In 1962, she entered Cambridge University as a PhD candidate despite having no undergraduate degree, and she earned her doctorate in ethology in 1966. Her 1958 anatomical study with Napier was preparation, not the Cambridge doctorate itself.