Penny Patterson Email & Phone Number

Penny Patterson is a President, Research Director & Co-Founder at The Gorilla Foundation based in Redwood City, California, United States, North America. Dr. Penny Patterson received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Stanford University where, as a graduate student in 1972, she began working with one-year-old Koko, a western lowland gorilla, thus beginning the longest ongoing interspecies communication study ever undertaken. For 45 years, Dr. Patterson worked with Koko, who advanced further with sign language than any nonhuman. Able to reveal her thoughts and feelings through the use of 1,000 gestural words, Koko provides unique insight into the mind of a gorilla. Bug Koko is not unique. Dr. Patterson also worked with a male gorilla, Michael, who also master sign language — and used it to recount his memory of losing his parents to poachers as an infant! In 1976, Dr. Patterson, Dr. Ronald Cohn, and the late Barbara F. Hiller established the Gorilla Foundation to benefit gorillas living in captivity and those struggling to survive in the rapidly disappearing African rainforest. Dedicated to the preservation, protection and propagation of gorillas and other endangered primates, the Foundation disseminates information about animal intelligence, gorilla behavior and psychobiology through its website (www.koko.org), journal, and scientific meetings and articles. The author of more than 40 publications including The Education of Koko with Eugene Linden, and the award-winning children’s books, Koko’s Kitten and Koko’s Story, Dr. Patterson has earned numerous awards and honors — including National Geographic Society grants and the Rolex Award for Enterprise — for her work with Koko and fellow gorillas, Michael and Ndume. The Gorilla Foundation is currently working to transmit Koko's Legacy (Koko passed away in June, 2018) for the benefit of all gorillas and great apes — by continuing to pioneer interspecies communication, developing a powerful new "Koko App" where people (and other great apes) can learn sign language directly from Koko, and by establishing a large natural gorilla sanctuary on Maui, Hawaii.