Sir David Frederick Attenborough (; born 8
May 1926) is an English broadcaster and natural
historian.
He is best known for writing and presenting,
in conjunction with the BBC Natural History
Unit, the nine natural history documentary
series forming the Life collection that together
constitute a comprehensive survey of animal
and plant life on Earth.
He is a former senior manager at the BBC,
having served as controller of BBC Two and
director of programming for BBC Television
in the 1960s and 1970s.
He is the only person to have won BAFTAs for
programmes in each of black and white, colour,
HD, 3D and 4K.
In 2018 and 2019 he received the Primetime
Emmy Award for Outstanding Narrator.Attenborough
is widely considered a national treasure in
the UK, although he himself does not like
the term.
In 2002 he was named among the 100 Greatest
Britons following a UK-wide poll for the BBC.
He is the younger brother of the director,
producer and actor Richard Attenborough, and
older brother of the motor executive John
Attenborough.
== Early life and family ==
Attenborough was born in Isleworth, Middlesex
(now part of west London), and grew up in
College House on the campus of the University
College, Leicester, where his father, Frederick,
was principal.
He is the middle of three long-lived sons;
his elder brother, Richard, became an actor
and director who died in 2014, and his younger
brother, John, was an executive at Italian
car manufacturer Alfa Romeo who died in 2012.
During the Second World War, through a British
volunteer network known as the Refugee Children's
Movement, his parents also fostered two Jewish
refugee girls from Europe.Attenborough spent
his childhood collecting fossils, stones,
and natural specimens.
He received encouragement aged seven, when
a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his "museum".
He also spent much time in the grounds of
the university, and, aged 11, he heard that
the zoology department needed a large supply
of newts, which he offered through his father
to supply for 3d each.
The source, which he did not reveal at the
time, was a pond less than five metres from
the department.
A few years later, one of his adoptive sisters
gave him a piece of amber containing prehistoric
creatures; some fifty years later, it would
be the focus of his programme The Amber Time
Machine.
In 1936, Attenborough and his brother Richard
attended a lecture by Grey Owl (Archibald
Belaney) at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, and
were influenced by his advocacy of conservation.
According to Richard, David was "bowled over
by the man's determination to save the beaver,
by his profound knowledge of the flora and
fauna of the Canadian wilderness and by his
warnings of ecological disaster should the
delicate balance between them be destroyed.
The idea that mankind was endangering nature
by recklessly despoiling and plundering its
riches was unheard of at the time, but it
is one that has remained part of Dave's own
credo to this day."
In 1999, Richard directed a biopic of Belaney
entitled Grey Owl.Attenborough was educated
at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester
and then won a scholarship to Clare College,
Cambridge in 1945, where he studied geology
and zoology and obtained a degree in natural
sciences.
In 1947, he was called up for national service
in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed
in North Wales and the Firth of Forth.
In 1950, Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth
Ebsworth Oriel; she died in 1997.
The couple had two children, Robert and Susan.
Robert is a senior lecturer in bioanthropology
for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology
at the Australian National University in Canberra.
Susan is a former primary school headmistress.
== First years at the BBC ==
After leaving the Navy, Attenborough took
a position editing children's science textbooks
for a publishing company.
He soon became disillusioned with the work
and in 1950 applied for a job as a radio talk
producer with the BBC.
Although he was rejected for this job, his
CV later attracted the interest of Mary Adams,
head of the Talks (factual broadcasting) department
of the BBC's fledgling television service.
Attenborough, like most Britons at that time,
did not own a television, and he had seen
only one programme in his life.
However, he accepted Adams' offer of a three-month
training course, and in 1952 he joined the
BBC full-time.
Initially discouraged from appearing on camera
because Adams thought his teeth were too big,
he became a producer for the Talks department,
which handled all non-fiction broadcasts.
His early projects included the quiz show
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? and Song Hunter,
a series about folk music presented by Alan
Lomax.Attenborough's association with natural
history programmes began when he produced
and presented the three-part series Animal
Patterns.
The studio-bound programme featured animals
from London Zoo, with the naturalist Julian
Huxley discussing their use of camouflage,
aposematism and courtship displays.
Through this programme, Attenborough met Jack
Lester, the curator of the zoo's reptile house,
and they decided to make a series about an
animal-collecting expedition.
The result was Zoo Quest, first broadcast
in 1954, where Attenborough became the presenter
at short notice due to Lester being taken
ill.In 1957, the BBC Natural History Unit
was formally established in Bristol.
Attenborough was asked to join it, but declined,
not wishing to move from London where he and
his young family were settled.
Instead, he formed his own department, the
Travel and Exploration Unit, which allowed
him to continue to front Zoo Quest as well
as produce other documentaries, notably the
Travellers' Tales and Adventure series.In
the early 1960s, Attenborough resigned from
the permanent staff of the BBC to study for
a postgraduate degree in social anthropology
at the London School of Economics, interweaving
his study with further filming.
However, he accepted an invitation to return
to the BBC as controller of BBC Two before
he could finish the degree.
== BBC administration ==
Attenborough became the controller of BBC
Two in March 1965, but had a clause inserted
in his contract that would allow him to continue
making programmes on an occasional basis.
Later the same year he filmed elephants in
Tanzania, and in 1969 he made a three-part
series on the cultural history of the Indonesian
island of Bali.
For the 1971 film A Blank on the Map, he joined
the first Western expedition to a remote highland
valley in New Guinea to seek out a lost tribe.
BBC Two had been launched in 1964, but had
struggled to capture the public's imagination.
When Attenborough arrived as controller, he
quickly abolished the channel's quirky kangaroo
mascot and shook up the schedule.
With a mission to make BBC Two's output diverse
and different from that offered by other networks,
he began to establish a portfolio of programmes
that defined the channel's identity for decades
to come.
Under his tenure, music, the arts, entertainment,
archaeology, experimental comedy, travel,
drama, sport, business, science and natural
history all found a place in the weekly schedules.
Often, an eclectic mix was offered within
a single evening's viewing.
Programmes he commissioned included Man Alive,
Call My Bluff, Chronicle, Match of the Day,
The Old Grey Whistle Test, Monty Python's
Flying Circus and The Money Programme.One
of his most significant decisions was to order
a 13-part series on the history of Western
art, to show off the quality of the new UHF
colour television service that BBC Two offered.
Broadcast to universal acclaim in 1969, Civilisation
set the blueprint for landmark authored documentaries,
which were informally known as "tombstone"
or "sledgehammer" projects.
Others followed, including Jacob Bronowski's
The Ascent of Man (also commissioned by Attenborough),
and Alistair Cooke's America.
Attenborough thought that the story of evolution
would be a natural subject for such a series.
He shared his idea with Chris Parsons, a producer
at the Natural History Unit, who came up with
the title Life on Earth and returned to Bristol
to start planning the series.
Attenborough harboured a strong desire to
present the series himself, but this would
not be possible so long as he remained in
a management post.
While in charge of BBC Two, Attenborough turned
down Terry Wogan's job application to be a
presenter on the channel, stating that there
weren't any suitable vacancies.
The channel already had an Irish announcer,
with Attenborough reflecting in 2016: "To
have had two Irishmen presenting on BBC Two
would have looked ridiculous.
This is no comment whatsoever on Terry Wogan's
talents."
Attenborough has also acknowledged that he
sanctioned the wiping of programmes during
this period to cut costs, including sketches
by Alan Bennett, which he later regretted.In
1969 Attenborough was promoted to director
of programmes, making him responsible for
the output of both BBC channels.
His tasks, which included agreeing budgets,
attending board meetings and firing staff,
were now far removed from the business of
filming programmes.
When Attenborough's name was being suggested
as a candidate for the position of Director-General
of the BBC in 1972, he phoned his brother
Richard to confess that he had no appetite
for the job.
Early the following year, he left his post
to return to full-time programme-making, leaving
him free to write and present the planned
natural history epic.
== Return to broadcasting ==
After his resignation, Attenborough became
a freelance broadcaster and immediately started
work on his next project, a pre-arranged trip
to Indonesia with a crew from the Natural
History Unit.
It resulted in the 1973 series Eastwards with
Attenborough, which was similar in tone to
the earlier Zoo Quest but without the animal-collecting
element.
After his return, he began to work on the
scripts for Life on Earth.
Due to the scale of his ambition, the BBC
decided to partner with an American network
to secure the necessary funding.
While the negotiations were proceeding, he
worked on a number of other television projects.
He presented a series on tribal art (The Tribal
Eye, 1975) and another on the voyages of discovery
(The Explorers, 1975).
He also presented a BBC children's series
about cryptozoology entitled Fabulous Animals
(1975), which featured mythical creatures
such as the griffin and kraken.
Eventually the BBC signed a co-production
deal with Turner Broadcasting and Life on
Earth moved into production in 1976.
=== Life series ===
Beginning with Life on Earth in 1979, Attenborough
set about creating a body of work which became
a benchmark of quality in wildlife film-making
and influenced a generation of documentary
film-makers.
The series also established many of the hallmarks
of the BBC's natural history output.
By treating his subject seriously and researching
the latest discoveries, Attenborough and his
production team gained the trust of scientists,
who responded by allowing him to feature their
subjects in his programmes.
In Rwanda, for example, Attenborough and his
crew were granted privileged access to film
Dian Fossey's research group of mountain gorillas.
Innovation was another factor in Life on Earth's
success: new film-making techniques were devised
to get the shots Attenborough wanted, with
a focus on events and animals that were hitherto
unfilmed.
Computerised airline schedules, which had
only recently been introduced, enabled the
series to be elaborately devised so that Attenborough
visited several locations around the globe
in each episode, sometimes even changing continents
mid-sentence.
Although appearing as the on-screen presenter,
he consciously restricted his time on camera
to give his subjects top billing.
The success of Life on Earth prompted the
BBC to consider a follow-up, and five years
later, The Living Planet was screened.
This time, Attenborough built his series around
the theme of ecology, the adaptations of living
things to their environment.
It was another critical and commercial success,
generating huge international sales for the
BBC.
In 1990, The Trials of Life completed the
original Life trilogy, looking at animal behaviour
through the different stages of life.
The series drew strong reactions from the
viewing public for its sequences of killer
whales hunting sea lions on a Patagonian beach
and chimpanzees hunting and violently killing
a colobus monkey.
In the 1990s, Attenborough continued to use
the "Life" title for a succession of authored
documentaries.
In 1993, he presented Life in the Freezer,
the first television series to survey the
natural history of Antarctica.
Although past normal retirement age, he then
embarked on a number of more specialised surveys
of the natural world, beginning with plants.
They proved a difficult subject for his producers,
who had to deliver five hours of television
featuring what are essentially immobile objects.
The result, The Private Life of Plants (1995),
showed plants as dynamic organisms by using
time-lapse photography to speed up their growth.
Prompted by an enthusiastic ornithologist
at the BBC Natural History Unit, Attenborough
then turned his attention to the animal kingdom
and in particular, birds.
As he was neither an obsessive twitcher nor
a bird expert, he decided he was better qualified
to make The Life of Birds (1998) on the theme
of behaviour.
The documentary series won a Peabody Award
the following year.
The order of the remaining "Life" series was
dictated by developments in camera technology.
For The Life of Mammals (2002), low-light
and infrared cameras were deployed to reveal
the behaviour of nocturnal mammals.
The series contains a number of memorable
two shots of Attenborough and his subjects,
which included chimpanzees, a blue whale and
a grizzly bear.
Advances in macro photography made it possible
to capture natural behaviour of very small
creatures for the first time, and in 2005,
Life in the Undergrowth introduced audiences
to the world of invertebrates.
At this point, Attenborough realised that
he had spent 20 years unconsciously assembling
a collection of programmes on all the major
groups of terrestrial animals and plants – only
reptiles and amphibians were missing.
When Life in Cold Blood was broadcast in 2008,
he had the satisfaction of completing the
set, brought together in a DVD encyclopaedia
called Life on Land.
In an interview that year, Attenborough was
asked to sum up his achievement, and responded:
The evolutionary history is finished.
The endeavour is complete.
If you'd asked me 20 years ago whether we'd
be attempting such a mammoth task, I'd have
said "Don't be ridiculous!"
These programmes tell a particular story and
I'm sure others will come along and tell it
much better than I did, but I do hope that
if people watch it in 50 years' time, it will
still have something to say about the world
we live in.
However, in 2010 Attenborough asserted that
his First Life – dealing with evolutionary
history before Life on Earth – should also
be included within the "Life" series.
In the documentary Attenborough's Journey,
he stated, "This series, to a degree which
I really didn't fully appreciate until I started
working on it, really completes the set."
=== 
Other documentaries ===
Alongside the "Life" series, Attenborough
has continued to work on other television
documentaries, mainly in the natural history
genre.
He wrote and presented a series on man's influence
on the natural history of the Mediterranean
basin, The First Eden, in 1987.
Two years later, he demonstrated his passion
for fossils in Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives.
Attenborough narrated every episode of Wildlife
on One, a BBC One wildlife series that ran
for 253 episodes between 1977 and 2005.
At its peak, it drew a weekly audience of
eight to ten million, and the 1987 episode
"Meerkats United" was voted the best wildlife
documentary of all time by BBC viewers.
He has also narrated over 50 episodes of Natural
World, BBC Two's flagship wildlife series.
(Its forerunner, The World About Us, was created
by Attenborough in 1969, as a vehicle for
colour television.)
In 1997, he narrated the BBC Wildlife Specials,
each focussing on a charismatic species, and
screened to mark the Natural History Unit's
40th anniversary.
As a writer and narrator, he continued to
collaborate with the BBC Natural History Unit
in the new millennium.
Alastair Fothergill, a senior producer with
whom Attenborough had worked on The Trials
of Life and Life in the Freezer, was making
The Blue Planet (2001), the Unit's first comprehensive
series on marine life.
He decided not to use an on-screen presenter
due to difficulties in speaking to a camera
through diving apparatus, but asked Attenborough
to narrate the films.
The same team reunited for Planet Earth (2006),
the biggest nature documentary ever made for
television and the first BBC wildlife series
to be shot in high definition.
In 2009, he co-wrote and narrated Life, a
ten-part series focussing on extraordinary
animal behaviour, and narrated Nature's Great
Events, which showed how seasonal changes
trigger major natural spectacles.
In 2011, Fothergill gave Attenborough a more
prominent role in Frozen Planet, a major series
on the natural history of the polar regions;
Attenborough appeared on screen and authored
the final episode, in addition to performing
voiceover duties.
Attenborough introduced and narrated the Unit's
first 4K production Life Story.
For Planet Earth II (2016), Attenborough returned
as narrator and presenter, with the main theme
music composed by Hans Zimmer.In October 2014,
the corporation announced a trio of new one-off
Attenborough documentaries as part of a raft
of new natural history programmes.
"Attenborough's Paradise Birds" and "Attenborough's
Big Birds" was shown on BBC Two and "Waking
Giants", which follows the discovery of giant
dinosaur bones in South America, aired on
BBC One.
The BBC also commissioned Atlantic Productions
to make a three-part, Attenborough-fronted
series Great Barrier Reef in 2015.
The series marked the 10th project for Attenborough
and Atlantic, and saw him returning to a location
he first filmed at in 1957.By the turn of
the millennium, Attenborough's authored documentaries
were adopting a more overtly environmentalist
stance.
In State of the Planet (2000), he used the
latest scientific evidence and interviews
with leading scientists and conservationists
to assess the impact of man's activities on
the natural world.
He later turned to the issues of global warming
(The Truth about Climate Change, 2006) and
human population growth (How Many People Can
Live on Planet Earth?, 2009).
He also contributed a programme which highlighted
the plight of endangered species to the BBC's
Saving Planet Earth project in 2007, the 50th
anniversary of the Natural History Unit.
Attenborough also forged a partnership with
Sky, working on documentaries for the broadcaster's
new 3D network, Sky 3D.
Their first collaboration was Flying Monsters
3D, a film about pterosaurs which debuted
on Christmas Day of 2010.
A second film, The Bachelor King 3D, followed
a year later.
His next 3D project, Conquest of the Skies,
made by the team behind the BAFTA-winning
David Attenborough's Natural History Museum
Alive, aired on Sky 3D at Christmas 2014.
Attenborough has narrated three series of
David Attenborough's Natural Curiosities for
UKTV channel Watch, with the third series
showing in 2015.
He has also narrated A majestic celebration:
Wild Karnataka, India's first blue-chip natural
history film, directed by Kalyan Varma and
Amoghavarsha.
=== More-recent projects ===
On radio, Attenborough has continued as one
of the presenters of BBC Radio 4's Tweet of
the Day, which began a second series in September
2014.Blue Planet II was broadcast in 2017,
with Attenborough returning as presenter.
The series was critically acclaimed and gained
the highest UK viewing figure for 2017, 14.1
million.
Attenborough narrates the 2018 five part series
Dynasties, each episode dealing with one species
in particular.In 2019, Attenborough narrated
Our Planet, an eight-part documentary series,
for Netflix.
He will also narrate Wild Karnataka, a documentary
about the Karnataka forest area.
In March 2019, It was announced that Attenborough
is to present an "urgent" one-off film documentary
about climate change for BBC One called Climate
Change – The Facts.
== Other work ==
From 1983, Attenborough worked on two environmentally
themed musicals with the WWF and writers Peter
Rose and Anne Conlon.
Yanomamo was the first, about the Amazon rainforest,
and the second, Ocean World, premiered at
the Royal Festival Hall in 1991.
They were both narrated by Attenborough on
their national tour and recorded on to audio
cassette.
Ocean World was also filmed for Channel 4
and later released.
In 1990, he highlighted the case of Mahjoub
Sharif as part of the BBC's Prisoners of Conscience
series.In May 2005, Attenborough was appointed
as patron of the UK's Blood Pressure Association,
which provides information and support to
people with hypertension.
In January 2009, the BBC commissioned Attenborough
to provide a series of 20 ten-minute monologues
covering the history of nature.
Entitled David Attenborough's Life Stories,
they are broadcast on Radio 4 on Friday nights.
Part of Radio 4's A Point of View strand,
the talks are also available as podcasts.He
appeared in the 2009 Children's Prom at the
BBC Promenade Concerts and in the Last Night
of the Proms on 12 September 2009, playing
a floor polisher in Sir Malcolm Arnold's "A
Grand, Grand Overture" (after which he was
"shot" by Rory Bremner, who was playing the
gun).
In 2009, he also became a patron of Population
Matters (formerly known as the Optimum Population
Trust), a UK charity advocating sustainable
human populations.He is also a patron of the
Friends of Richmond Park and serves on the
advisory board of BBC Wildlife magazine.
Attenborough is also an honorary member of
BSES Expeditions, a youth development charity
that operates challenging scientific research
expeditions to remote wilderness environments.
== Achievements, awards and recognition ==
Attenborough's contribution to broadcasting
and wildlife film-making has brought him international
recognition.
He has been called "the great communicator,
the peerless educator" and "the greatest broadcaster
of our time."
His programmes are often cited as an example
of what public service broadcasting should
be, even by critics of the BBC, and have influenced
a generation of wildlife film-makers.
=== Styles and honours ===
Mr David Attenborough (1926–1974)
Mr David Attenborough CBE (1974–1983)
Mr David Attenborough CBE FRS (1983–1985)
Sir David Attenborough CBE FRS (1985–1991)
Sir David Attenborough CVO CBE FRS (1991–1996)
Sir David Attenborough CH CVO CBE FRS (1996–2005)
Sir David Attenborough OM CH CVO CBE FRS (2005–2007)
Sir David Attenborough OM CH CVO CBE FRS FSA
(2007–)
=== Honorary titles ===
By January 2013, Attenborough had collected
32 honorary degrees from British universities,
more than any other person.
In 1980, he was honoured by the Open University
with whom he has had a close association throughout
his career.
He also has honorary Doctor of Science awards
from the University of Cambridge (1984) and
University of Oxford (1988).
In 2006, the two eldest Attenborough brothers
returned to their home city to receive the
title of Distinguished Honorary Fellows of
the University of Leicester, "in recognition
of a record of continuing distinguished service
to the University."
David Attenborough was previously awarded
an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the
university in 1970, and was made an honorary
Freeman of the City of Leicester in 1990.
In 2013, he was made an Honorary Freeman of
the City of Bristol.
In 2010, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate
from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University,
his first in Africa.
Attenborough has received the title Honorary
Fellow from Clare College, Cambridge (1980),
the Zoological Society of London (1998), the
Linnean Society (1999), the Institute of Biology
(Now the Royal Society of Biology) (2000)
and the Society of Antiquaries (2007).
He is Honorary Patron of the North American
Native Plant Society and was elected as a
Corresponding Member of the Australian Academy
of Science.
=== Recognition ===
Attenborough has been featured as the subject
of a number of BBC television programmes.
Life on Air (2002) examined the legacy of
his work and Attenborough the Controller (2002)
focused on his time in charge of BBC Two.
He was also featured prominently in The Way
We Went Wild (2004), a series about natural
history television presenters, and 100 Years
of Wildlife Films (2007), a special programme
marking the centenary of the nature documentary.
In 2006, British television viewers were asked
to vote for their Favourite Attenborough Moments
for a UKTV poll to coincide with the broadcaster's
80th birthday.
The winning clip showed Attenborough observing
the mimicry skills of the superb lyrebird.
Attenborough was named the most trusted celebrity
in the UK in a 2006 Reader's Digest poll,
and in 2007 he won The Culture Show's Living
Icon Award.
He has also been named among the 100 Greatest
Britons in a 2002 BBC poll and is one of the
top ten "Heroes of Our Time" according to
New Statesman magazine.In September 2009,
London's Natural History Museum opened the
Attenborough Studio, part of its Darwin Centre
development.
In December 2013, he was awarded the freedom
of the city of Bristol.In 2012, Attenborough
was among the British cultural icons selected
by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new
version of his most famous artwork – the
Beatles' Sgt.
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover
– to celebrate the British cultural figures
of his life.
The same year, Attenborough featured in the
BBC Radio 4 series The New Elizabethans to
mark the diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth
II.
A panel of seven academics, journalists and
historians named him among the group of people
in the UK "whose actions during the reign
of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact
on lives in these islands".In May 2016, it
was announced that a new British polar research
ship will be named RRS Sir David Attenborough
in his honour.
While an Internet poll suggesting the name
of the ship had the most votes for Boaty McBoatface,
Science Minister Jo Johnson said there were
"more suitable names", and the official name
was eventually picked up from one of the more
favoured choices.
However, one of its research subs will be
named "Boaty" in recognition of the public
vote.
==== Species named in Attenborough's honour
====
At least 20 species and genera, both living
and extinct, have been named in Attenborough's
honour.
Plants named after him include an alpine hawkweed
(Hieracium attenboroughianum) discovered in
the Brecon Beacons, a species of Ecuadorian
flowering tree (Blakea attenboroughi), one
of the world's largest-pitchered carnivorous
plants (Nepenthes attenboroughii), along with
a genus of flowering plants (Sirdavidia).
Arthropods named after Attenborough include
a butterfly, Attenborough's black-eyed satyr
(Euptychia attenboroughi), a dragonfly, Attenborough's
pintail (Acisoma attenboroughi), a millimetre-long
goblin spider (Prethopalpus attenboroughi),
an Indonesian flightless weevil (Trigonopterus
attenboroughi), a Madagascan ghost shrimp
(Ctenocheloides attenboroughi), and a soil
snail (Palaina attenboroughi).
The Monogenean Cichlidogyrus attenboroughi,
a parasite from a deep-sea fish in the Lake
Tanganyika, is probably the only parasite
species named after him.
Vertebrates have also been named after Attenborough,
including a Namibian lizard (Platysaurus attenboroughi),
a bird (Polioptila attenboroughi), a Peruvian
frog (Pristimantis attenboroughi), a Madagascan
stump-toed frog (Stumpffia davidattenboroughi),
and one of only four species of long-beaked
echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi).
In 1993, after discovering that the Mesozoic
reptile Plesiosaurus conybeari did not belong
to the genus Plesiosaurus, the palaeontologist
Robert Bakker renamed the species Attenborosaurus
conybeari.
A fossilised armoured fish discovered in Western
Australia in 2008 was named Materpiscis attenboroughi,
after Attenborough had filmed at the site
and highlighted its scientific importance
in Life on Earth.
The Materpiscis fossil is believed to be the
earliest organism capable of internal fertilisation.
A miniature marsupial lion, Microleo attenboroughi,
was named in his honour in 2016.
The fossil grasshopper Electrotettix attenboroughi
was named after Attenborough.
In March 2017, a 430 million year old tiny
crustacean was named after him.
Called Cascolus ravitis, the first word is
a Latin translation of the root meaning of
"Attenborough", and the second is based on
a description of him in Latin.
In July 2017, the Caribbean bat Myotis attenboroughi
was named after him.
A new species of fan-throated lizard from
coastal Kerala in southern India was named
Sitana attenboroughii in his honour when it
was described in 2018.In 2018, a new species
of phytoplankton, Syracosphaera azureaplaneta,
was named to honour The Blue Planet, the TV
documentary presented by Attenborough, and
to recognise his contribution to promoting
understanding of the oceanic environment.
The same year, Attenborough was also commemorated
in the name of the scarab beetle Sylvicanthon
attenboroughi.
=== Awards ===
2017: Britain-Australia Society Award for
outstanding contribution to strengthening
British/Australian bilateral understanding
and relations.
2017: Honorary Member of the Moscow Society
of Naturalists
2017: Gold Medal of the Royal Canadian Geographical
Society
2018: Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding
Narrator
2019: Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding
Narrator
=== 
Lectures ===
In 1973, he was invited to deliver the Royal
Institution Christmas Lecture on The Language
of Animals.
== Views and advocacy ==
=== 
Environment ===
Attenborough's programmes have often included
references to the impact of human society
on the natural world.
The last episode of The Living Planet, for
example, focuses almost entirely on humans'
destruction of the environment and ways that
it could be stopped or reversed.
Despite this, he has been criticised for not
giving enough prominence to environmental
messages.
Some environmentalists feel that programmes
like Attenborough's give a false picture of
idyllic wilderness and do not do enough to
acknowledge that such areas are increasingly
encroached upon by humans.Attenborough has
subsequently become more vocal in his support
of environmental causes.
In 2005 and 2006, he backed a BirdLife International
project to stop the killing of albatross by
longline fishing boats.
He gave public support to WWF's campaign to
have 220,000 square kilometres of Borneo's
rainforest designated a protected area.
He also serves as a vice-president of BTCV,
vice-president of Fauna and Flora International,
president of Butterfly Conservation and president
of Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust.
In 2003, he launched an appeal on behalf of
the World Land Trust to create a rainforest
reserve in Ecuador in memory of Christopher
Parsons, the producer of Life on Earth and
a personal friend, who had died the previous
year.
The same year, he helped to launch ARKive,
a global project instigated by Parsons to
gather together natural history media into
a digital library.
ARKive is an initiative of Wildscreen, of
which Attenborough is a patron.
He later became patron of the World Land Trust,
and an active supporter.
He supported Glyndebourne in their successful
application to obtain planning permission
for a wind turbine in an Area of Outstanding
Natural Beauty, and gave evidence at the planning
inquiry arguing in favour of the proposal.
Attenborough again took up the topic of population
in an episode of Horizon entitled, How Many
People Can Live on Planet Earth?
He has written and spoken publicly about the
fact that, despite past scepticism, he believes
the Earth's climate is warming in a way that
is cause for concern, and that this can likely
be attributed to human activity.
In a January 2013 interview with the Radio
Times, Attenborough described humans as a
"plague on the Earth". and criticized the
act of sending food to famine-stricken countries
while overlooking population control.
In May 2015, United States President Barack
Obama interviewed Attenborough at the White
House in Washington D.C.
Together, they discussed the future of the
planet, their passion for nature and what
measures can be taken to protect the environment.
=== Attitude to religion and creationism ===
In a December 2005 interview with Simon Mayo
on BBC Radio Five Live, Attenborough stated
that he considers himself an agnostic.
When asked whether his observation of the
natural world has given him faith in a creator,
he generally responds with some version of
this story, making reference to the Onchocerca
volvulus parasitic worm:
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 [he's] concerned,
if there is a supreme being then he chose
organic evolution as a way of bringing into
existence the natural world".
In a BBC Four interview with Mark Lawson,
he was asked if he at any time had any religious
faith.
He replied simply, "No."
He has also said "It never really occurred
to me to believe in God".In 2002, Attenborough
joined an effort by leading clerics and scientists
to oppose the inclusion of creationism in
the curriculum of UK state-funded independent
schools which receive private sponsorship,
such as the Emmanuel Schools Foundation.
In 2009, he stated that the Book of Genesis,
by saying that the world was there for people
to dominate, had taught generations that they
can "dominate" the environment, and that this
has resulted in the devastation of vast areas
of the environment.
He further explained to the science journal
Nature, "That's why Darwinism, and the fact
of evolution, is of great importance, because
it is that attitude which has led to the devastation
of so much, and we are in the situation that
we are in."Also in early 2009, the BBC broadcast
an Attenborough one-hour special, Charles
Darwin and the Tree of Life.
In reference to the programme, Attenborough
stated that "People write to me that evolution
is only a theory.
Well, it is not a theory.
Evolution is as solid a historical fact as
you could conceive.
Evidence from every quarter.
What is a theory is whether natural selection
is the mechanism and the only mechanism.
That is a theory.
But the historical reality that dinosaurs
led to birds and mammals produced whales,
that's not theory."
He strongly opposes creationism and its offshoot
"intelligent design", saying that a survey
that found a quarter of science teachers in
state schools believe that creationism should
be taught alongside evolution in science lessons
was "really terrible".In March 2009, Attenborough
appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross.
Attenborough stated that he felt evolution
did not rule out the existence of a God and
accepted the title of agnostic saying, "My
view is: I don't know one way or the other
but I don't think that evolution is against
a belief in God."Attenborough has joined the
evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and
other top scientists in signing a campaign
statement co-ordinated by the British Humanist
Association (BHA).
The statement calls for "creationism to be
banned from the school science curriculum
and for evolution to be taught more widely
in schools."
=== 
BBC and public service broadcasting ===
Attenborough is a lifelong supporter of the
BBC, public service broadcasting and the television
licence.
He has said that public service broadcasting
"is one of the things that distinguishes this
country and makes me want to live here", and
believes that it is not reducible to individual
programmes, but "can only effectively operate
as a network [...] that measures its success
not only by its audience size but by the range
of its schedule".
... the BBC per minute in almost every category
is as cheap as you can find anywhere in the
world and produces the best quality.
[...] The BBC has gone through swingeing staff
cuts.
It has been cut to the bone, if you divert
licence fee money elsewhere, you cut quality
and services.
[...] There is a lot of people who want to
see the BBC weakened.
They talk of this terrible tax of the licence
fee.
Yet it is the best bargain that is going.
Four radio channels and god knows how many
TV channels.
It is piffling.
Attenborough expressed the view “there have
always been politicians or business people
who have wanted to cut the BBC back or stop
it”, adding “there’s always been trouble
about the licence and if you dropped your
guard you could bet our bottom dollar there'd
be plenty of people who'd want to take it
away.
The licence fee is the basis on which the
BBC is based and if you destroy it, broadcasting...
becomes a wasteland.”
He expressed regret at some of the changes
made to the BBC in the 1990s by its Director-General,
John Birt, who introduced an internal market
at the corporation, slimmed and even closed
some departments and outsourced much of the
corporation's output to private production
companies, in line with the Broadcasting Act
1990.
In 2008, he criticised the BBC's television
schedules, positing that the two senior networks,
BBC One and BBC Two – which Attenborough
states were “first set up as a partnership”
– now “schedule simultaneously programmes
of identical character, thereby contradicting
the very reason that the BBC was given a second
network.”
=== 
Politics ===
In 2013, Attenborough joined rock guitarists
Brian May and Slash in opposing the government's
policy on the cull of badgers in the UK by
participating in a song dedicated to badgers.In
August 2014, Attenborough was one of 200 public
figures who were signatories to a letter to
The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland
would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom
in September's referendum on that issue.Prior
to the 2015 UK general election, Attenborough
was one of several celebrities who endorsed
the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's
Caroline Lucas.Commenting on the 2016 US presidential
election in an interview by Radio Times, Attenborough
jokingly commented on the rise of Donald Trump:
"Do we have any control or influence over
the American elections?
Of course we don’t.
We could shoot him, it's not a bad idea."
== 
Health and future plans ==
Attenborough had a pacemaker fitted in June
2013.
In September 2013 he commented:
If I was earning my money by hewing coal I
would be very glad indeed to stop.
But I'm not.
I'm swanning round the world looking at the
most fabulously interesting things.
Such good fortune.
== Filmography ==
David Attenborough's television credits span
seven decades and his association with natural
history programmes dates back to The Pattern
of Animals and Zoo Quest in the early 1950s.
His most influential work, 1979's Life on
Earth, launched a strand of nine authored
documentaries with the BBC Natural History
Unit which shared the Life strand name and
spanned 30 years.
He narrated every episode of the long-running
BBC series Wildlife on One and in his later
career has voiced several high-profile BBC
wildlife documentaries, among them The Blue
Planet and Planet Earth.
He became a pioneer in the 3D documentary
format with Flying Monsters in 2010.
== Books ==
David Attenborough's work as an author has
strong parallels with his broadcasting career.
In the 1950s and 1960s, his published work
included accounts of his animal collecting
expeditions around the world, which became
the Zoo Quest series.
He wrote an accompanying volume to each of
his nine Life documentaries, along with books
on tribal art and birds of paradise.
His autobiography, Life on Air, was published
in 2002, revised in 2009 and is one of a number
of his works which is available as a self-narrated
audiobook.
Attenborough has also contributed forewords
and introductions to many other works, notably
those accompanying Planet Earth, Frozen Planet,
Africa and other BBC series he has narrated.
=== Bibliography ===
Zoo Quest to Guyana (1956)
Zoo Quest for a Dragon (1957) – republished
in 1959 to include an additional 85 pages
titled Quest for the Paradise Birds
Zoo Quest in Paraguay (1959)
Quest in Paradise (1960)
People of Paradise (1960)
Zoo Quest to Madagascar (1961)
Quest Under Capricorn (1963)
Fabulous Animals (1975)
The Tribal Eye (1976)
Life on Earth (1979)
Discovering Life on Earth (1981)
The Living Planet (1984)
The First Eden: The Mediterranean World and
Man (1987)
The Atlas of the Living World (1989)
The Trials of Life (1990)
The Private Life of Plants (1994)
The Life of Birds (1998)
The Life of Mammals (2002)
Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster (2002)
– autobiography, revised in 2009
Life in the Undergrowth (2005)
Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History
in the Age of Discovery (2007) – with Susan
Owens, Martin Clayton and Rea Alexandratos
Life in Cold Blood (2007)
David Attenborough's Life Stories (2009)
David Attenborough's New Life Stories (2011)
Drawn From Paradise: The Discovery, Art and
Natural History of the Birds of Paradise (2012)
– with Errol Fuller
Adventures of a Young Naturalist: The Zoo
Quest Expeditions (2017)
Journeys to the Other Side of the World: Further
Adventures of a Young Naturalist (2018)
Dynasties: The Rise and Fall of Animal Families
with Stephen Moss (BBC Books, 2018) ISBN 978-1785943010
== Audio recordings ==
Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson (available
on audiocassette, 1978)
Yanomamo (musical entertainment, 1983) by
Peter Rose and Anne Conlon; on-stage narration
and published audio recording
Ocean World (musical entertainment, 1990)
by Peter Rose and Anne Conlon; on-stage narration
(including at The Royal Festival Hall), for
audio recording and video broadcast (both
published)
Peter and the Wolf for BBC Music Magazine
(free CD with the June 2000 issue).In addition,
Attenborough has recorded some of his own
works in audiobook form, including Life on
Earth, Zoo Quest for a Dragon, and his autobiography
Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster
