Lincoln, Goodall and the Lincoln Group -- Six Degrees of Separation
- edepstein1
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
By Jeffrey Boutwell and William F. Walsh
Jan. 7 2026
It’s always fun to find unusual connections between famous people, especially those living in different centuries and from very different walks of life. The two of us found such a connection, extending from Abraham Lincoln to Jane Goodall, as follows:
One: Jeffrey and Bill meet through their membership in the Lincoln Group of D.C.
Two: While corresponding by email, Bill notices that Jeffrey lives on Ring Dove Lane in Columbia, Maryland.
Three: Having had a career in cognitive development, Bill tells Jeffrey that the ring dove bird species played a significant role in the history of psychobiology and was a primary research interest of Daniel S. Lehrman, a pioneer in the field of hormones and behavior whom Bill admired.
Four: Jeffrey reads up on Lehrman and discovers that Lehrman worked closely with a British pioneer in animal behavior and development psychology studies, Robert A. Hinde of Cambridge University.
Five: During Jeffrey’s career with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, working on ways to control and reduce nuclear weapons, Jeffrey came to know Robert Hinde well, attending international conferences and working together on Pugwash publications, with Robert applying his behavioral expertise on individual and group conflict to the avoidance of war.
Six: Hinde was Jane Goodall's mentor and the supervisor of her Ph.D. thesis, “Behavior of Free-Living Chimpanzees,” completed in 1966 at Cambridge University and based on the research she carried out in the Gombe Reserve in Tanzania under the tutelage of Louis Leakey. Goodall died a few months ago, on October 1, 2025, at the age of 91.
And there you have it -- a chain of connections that Bill and Jeffrey discovered because of their fascination with Abraham Lincoln and their membership in the Lincoln Group of Washington, D.C.
To join the Lincoln Group, visit Lincolnian.org and click on the "Join Now" button in the upper right.
Photo credit: Floatjon, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons