Beautiful Minds Series 2

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2 Cover
3 Information
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5 Technical Specs
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[edit] General Information

Biography, Science Documentary hosted by Tim Bentinck, published by BBC in 2012 - English narration

[edit] Cover

[edit] Information

Who are the modern men and women who will be remembered for the brilliance of their minds? What are your legacy and what you can to tell us his extraordinary discoveries about the nature of science and the nature of truth? Great minds don't think alike. In fact, the offbeat and complex thinking of a handful of pioneers has led to some of the greatest scientific discoveries of our age. In Beautiful Minds three of Britain's most influential and respected scientists explain how their unique scientific perspectives have redefined how we think about the world around us. Series 2 assembles palaeontologist Jenny Clack, physicist Andre Geim and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkinsto give their unique perspectives on life, the Universe and everything inbetween. They explain what drives this extraordinary passion for science, the inspiration behind the moment of insight, and the possible far-reaching consequences of their discoveries.

[edit] Professor Jenny Clack

Jenny Clack recounts how she overcame setbacks before she found and described a fossil which offered new evidence of how fish made the transition onto land.
For palaeontologist Professor Jenny Clack, who solved one of the greatest mysteries in the history of life on Earth, success was far from inevitable. A chance discovery in 1986 in the earth sciences department of Cambridge University, of long-forgotten fossils collected from the Devonian rocks of East Greenland in 1970, was to shape the rest of her career. She recounts how she had to overcome a series of setbacks before she found and described the fossil Acanthostega, a 365 million-year-old creature that offered dramatic new evidence of how fish made the transition onto land.
She authored or co-authored more than 120 research papers as well as numerous popular articles and book reviews. A measure of the significance of her work is that 15 of her research papers were published in the journal Nature. Her one book, "Gaining Ground, The Origin and Evolution of Tetrapods" (2002), summarises the results of research on early tetrapods over the previous 25 years.

[edit] Professor Andre Geim

Professor Andre Geim is a condensed matter physicist at the University of Manchester. His life's work has been to gain a better understanding of the materials that make up the world around us. While just one subject can be a scientist's life's work, Andre has made switching fields a feature of his career. But while straying from the conventional path can be risky for a scientist, Andre has repeatedly turned it to his advantage. His "let's try it and see" approach means he's the only individual winner of the both the Nobel and the more light hearted Ig Nobel Prizes. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010 for uncovering the extraordinary properties of a material called graphene, but Geim can also lay claim to seeding two other new areas of physics research--levitation and gecko tape.
His constant search for new ideas has led to some extraordinary discoveries, from levitating frogs to a tape that sticks to surfaces like a gecko's foot. He reveals how his playful approach to his research helped him uncover the properties of graphene, the world's thinnest material, and won him a Nobel Prize.

[edit] Professor Richard Dawkins

Dawkins discusses his book, the Selfish Gene, which divided the scientific community and made him the most influential evolutionary biologist of his time.
Professor Richard Dawkins is one of the most well-known and controversial scientists in Britain. A passionate atheist he believes science rather than religion offers us the best way to appreciate the wonders of the Universe we live in. In the last 10 years he has become notorious for his outspoken views on religion, but at the heart of his success is his explosive first book -- The Selfish Gene -- which put forward a radical rewriting of evolutionary theory and divided the scientific community. Much of the controversy comes from its provocative title.
Now, in this uniquely candid programme, Dawkins admits that the title may have been a mistake. In this journey through Dawkin's life we'll discover how The Selfish Gene got its controversial name, how Dawkins became the most influential evolutionary biologist of his generation and what has motivated him to become religion's most ferocious critic.

[edit] Screenshots

[edit] Technical Specs

Video Codec: XviD 1.1.2 Final
Video Bitrate: 1543 kbps
Video Resolution: 624x352
Display Aspect Ratio: 1.773:1 / 16:9
Frames Per Second: 25.000 fps
Audio Codec: 0x0055 MPEG-1 Layer 3
Audio Bitrate: 128kb/s CBR 48000 Hz
Audio Streams: 2
Audio Languages: english
RunTime Per Part: 59 min
Number Of Parts: 3
Part Size: 700 MB
Source: PDTV
Encoded by: johncymru@a.b.documentaries