David Attenborough



         


Sir David Frederick Attenborough, CH, CVO, CBE, FRS, born May 8, 1926 in London, (the younger brother of director and actor Richard Attenborough), is the presenter of many ground-breaking and award winning BBC wildlife documentaries, and a former senior manager for the BBC. He has travelled widely, originally to collect animals for zoos. He is also an anthropologist.

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Education and early career

Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and then won a scolarship to Clare College, Cambridge, where he obtaned a degree in natural sciences.

He joined the Royal Navy in 1947 and, after two years' service, worked for a publishing company, eventually joining the BBC in 1952. His association with natural history programmes began in 1954 with the series, Zoo Quest.

From 1965 to 1968, Attenborough was Controller of BBC2 (as it was then styled). From 1969 to 1972, he was BBC Television's Director of Programmes (responsible for both BBC1 and BBC 2, but turned down the offer to become Director General of the BBC. In 1972, he resigned his post and returned to programme making.

Among the programmes he introduced were Match of the Day, Pot Black, The Likely Lads, Not Only... But Also, Horizon, Man Alive, Masterclass, The Forsyte Saga The Old Grey Whistle Test, and Life on Earth, The Living Planet and Trials of Life. These examine the world's organisms from the viewpoints of taxonomy, ecology and adaptive fitness respectively.

In addition to these series, he presented more specialised surveys including The Private Life of Plants, Life in the Freezer (about adaptation to cold climates), The Life of Birds, The Blue Planet (about life in the oceans) and The Life of Mammals. At the end of 2003, he was working on The Life of Insects.

Attenborough also narrated the long-running half-hour nature series Wildlife on One on BBC ONE (sometimes retitled Wildlife on Two for BBC TWO, or just BBC Wildlife), where he only made two or three appearances on camera.

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Achievements

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awarded him the Desmond Davis Award in 1970, and a Fellowship in 1979. He was appointed CBE in 1974, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1983, and received a knighthood in 1985. In 1991 he was made a CVO for producing the Queen's Christmas broadcast for a number of years, and in 1996 became a Companion of Honour for "services to nature broadcasting."

In June 2004, Attenborough and Sir Peter Scott were jointly profiled in the second of a three part BBC TWO series, The Way We Went Wild, about televison wildlife presenters. Part three also featured Attenborough extensively.

The next month, another BBC TWO programme, Attenborough the Controller, recalled his time as Director of Programmes for BBC2.

Some people, including the former BBC producer Brian Leith , have suggested that David Attenborough's 50 year career at the BBC making natural history documentaries and travelling extensively throughout the world, has probably made him the most travelled person on Earth ever.

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Views on creationism

Attenborough's documentaries exposed millions to the diversity of life on Earth, including, of course, viewers who subscribe to the belief that all life was directly created by God, known as creationism. In his series, Attenborough rarely explicitly speaks about the mechanisms of evolution. Instead, he describes the advantages of each adaptation in high detail -- why flowers are shaped in a certain way, why birds and animals migrate, how mechanisms of mimicry can serve as protection or to attract insects and animals, and so forth.

As such, his work has been cited by some creationists as exemplary in that it does not "shove evolution down the viewer's throat". Others have written Attenborough letters and asked him to explicitly refer to God as the creator of life. In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, he has responded publicly:

"My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy'."

He has explained that he feels the evidence all over the planet clearly shows evolution to be the best way to explain the diversity of life, and that "as far as I'm concerned, if there is a supreme being then He chose organic evolution as a way of bringing into existence the natural world."

In 2002, Attenborough joined an effort by leading clerics and scientists to oppose the inclusion of creationism in the curriculum of state-funded public schools which receive private sponsorship. His most recent TV series, The Life of Mammals, makes numerous direct references to evolution, in particular human evolution.

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Work

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Bibliography

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DVDs

A number of Attenborough's programmes have been available on video; most are now out-of-print. These DVDs are available (unless stated, dates are of original transmission):

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Narrated by Attenborough





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