Undeterred, she contacted a renowned anthropologist to ask if she could come and talk to him “about animals”. Incredibly, Dr Louis Leakley took a punt on this young woman with an ‘uncluttered mind’, and sent her to Tanzania to record in minute detail the behaviour of chimpanzees. She, and we, never looked back.

Goodall, often pictured bare-legged and shimmying up trees in order to observe her subjects, persistently and patiently defied the media’s stereotype of ‘beauty and the beast’. She simply turned the volume down and concentrated on what mattered. Not only is she the world’s foremost expert in her field, she has become a fiercely eloquent advocate for the environment – never more so than now, when it sits precariously in the most dangerous of hands. Above all, Jane Goodall continues to teach us that, as humans, we are no more entitled to our glorious planet than the chimps she so lovingly protects.

My feminist icon: Susie Dent on the woman who inspires her most