Jane Goodall earned a PhD from the University of Cambridge. She received the doctorate in ethology, the scientific study of animal behavior, in 1965 after conducting her chimpanzee research in Tanzania.
Goodall’s route to Cambridge was unusual. When Louis Leakey sent her to begin studying chimpanzees, she had no bachelor’s degree. Cambridge nevertheless admitted her directly to doctoral study, making her the eighth person allowed to pursue a PhD there without first completing an undergraduate degree.
Her dissertation, completed in 1966 under the supervision of Robert Hinde, was titled “Behaviour of Free-Living Chimpanzees.” It drew on her first five years of fieldwork at Gombe. The answer is sometimes confused with DSc because Goodall later received honorary science doctorates, including one from the Open University of Tanzania. Those honorary awards were separate from the Cambridge PhD she earned through doctoral research.