Born on May 9, 1937, in
Ithaca, New York, to painter
Alison Mason Kingsbury and poet
Morris Bishop, Jolly held a BA from
Cornell University, and a PhD from
Yale University. She had been a researcher at the
New York Zoological Society,
Cambridge University,
University of Sussex,
Rockefeller University, and
Princeton University. In 1998, she was made Officer of the National Order of Madagascar (''Officier de l'Ordre National, Madagascar''). At the time of her death she was a visiting scientist at the
University of Sussex. Under her maiden name, she published "Control of the Hand in Lower Primates" in 1962. Jolly began studying lemur behavior at
Berenty in 1963. She noted that while lemurs lack monkeys' ability to learn about and manipulate objects, they showed similarly strong social skills. At the time, it was commonly believed that solving technical and foraging challenges is what fueled the advancement of primate intelligence. But Jolly's field work led her to conclude that social living preceded foraging skills and thus played a more central role. In so doing, Jolly laid the seminal groundwork for
Richard Byrne,
Andrew Whiten, and
Frans de Waal to later develop the
social intelligence hypothesis. Jolly suggested that the female prosimians she observed may dominate males — becoming the first scientist to identify female dominance. Jolly encouraged field studies that contributed to knowledge about Malagasy wildlife and advised many researchers; she briefed
Jane Wilson-Howarth and colleagues before their first expedition to Madagascar in 1981. Since 1990, Jolly had returned for every birthing season to carry out research assisted by student volunteers. She focused on
ring-tailed lemur demography, ranging, and especially inter-troop and territorial behavior, in the context of the fivefold difference in population density from front to back of the reserve. Her scientific books include
Lemur Behavior: A Madagascar Field Study,
The Evolution of Primate Behavior and ''Lucy's Legacy: Sex and Intelligence in Human Evolution
. Her non-technical works include Madagascar: A World Out of Time
and Lords & Lemurs: Mad Scientists, Kings With Spears, and the Survival of Diversity in Madagascar''. She also wrote numerous articles for consumer magazines and scientific journals. Jolly was the author of two series of children's books—The Ako Books and The Fiddle Stories. In 2005, she published the first story in the series of Ako Books. The purpose of this series of books is to teach to children around the world about the different types of lemurs and their critical habitats in Madagascar. == Eponym ==