Jane Goodall has opened up about her first marriage and how she wishes it could have played out.
The 91-year-old primatologist was a guest Wednesday on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast, where the two spoke about relationships and how Goodall was able to handle both her job and a love life.
She met her first husband, the late National Geographic photographer Hugo van Lawick, when his magazine sent him to take photos of Goodall while she was studying chimpanzees in Africa.
“They wanted to make a film and they wanted good photographs, so they sent Hugo van Lawick, and I really didn’t want him to come,” she told Cooper. “I hadn’t met him because I just wanted to be there with the chimps, you know. I didn’t want anybody, and I was afraid they’d be scared of him and, you know, all my hard work would be undone.”
Goodall quickly learned about van Lawick’s love of animals and appreciated the work he was doing to “share the knowledge that chimpanzees really are like us.”
They were soon married for ten years from 1964 to 1974 and welcomed one child together, Hugo Eric Louis.
In terms of the couple breaking up, Goodall said their relationship “ended gradually.” She explained that National Geographic stopped paying van Lawick to come to Gombe in Tanzania, where she was studying chimpanzees.
“He had to go on with his career and he got some money to do films on the Serengeti, and I couldn’t leave Gombe,” she said. “I had to stay … I couldn’t leave Gombe, and so it slowly drifted apart. And it was sad.”
Despite the relationship not panning out, the primatologist reflected on the decision, saying it was “the right thing.”
But, she added: “You know, I definitely wish we could have carried on with that marriage because it was a good one.”
One year after her divorce from van Lawick, Goodall married Tanzanian parks director Derek Bryceson, who left her widowed in 1980.
She has previously talked about her relationships with the two men, revealing in an interview with People back in 2020 why she decided not to get married a third time after Bryceson’s death.
“Well, I didn’t want to,” she told the publication at the time. “I didn’t meet the right person, I suppose, or potentially the right person.”
“I had lots of men friends, many,” Goodall added. “I had lots of women friends, too. My life was complete. I didn’t need a husband.”
In light of how both of her marriages ended, she told the publication that they still had a profound impact on her life. “If I hadn’t married him, there wouldn’t be a Gombe today,” she said about Bryceson, noting he helped her establish the Gombe Stream National Park.
“If Hugo hadn’t come along, the chimp story [probably] would have ended,” Goodall added.
She also noted: “ Unfortunately, they were both extremely jealous. Both of them. Even jealous of women friends. They were really jealous and possessive … How I could do it twice? I don’t know.”
