Today is Sir David Attenborough’s 100th birthday.
By bringing animals like dinosaurs and polar bears into the homes of hundreds of millions of television viewers, the naturalist has encouraged generations to learn more about the globe.
For almost 70 years, his quiet, respectful murmur has told the story of nearly every facet of life on Earth.
However, the presenter acknowledges that he has never enjoyed being famous and feels that other people should be given more credit.
“I have the greatest job in the world,” he declared in a recent interview. How fortunate I’ve been. People urge me to write a phrase or two on beautiful images of things we have never seen before.
He has even made light of the fact that Buckingham Palace mistaken him for his older brother Richard, the filmmaker and actor who passed away in 2014 at the age of 90.
On his ninth birthday, Sir David’s father Frederick gave him a fire salamander as a pet, which marked the beginning of his own travels.
In the 1970s, Sir David Attenborough and cameraman Martin Saunders were on site for Life On Earth. Today, Sir David turns 100.
The broadcaster acknowledged that he has no intention of retiring.
On their wedding day in 1950, the TV host, on the left, was at St. Anne’s Church in Kew Green with his brother Richard Attenborough and wife Jane Oriel.
After returning from the joint London Zoo and BBC trip to British Guyana in 1955, Sir David held his son Robert and a coati, a member of the raccoon family.
When Georgie, a sulphur-crested cockatoo, lets forth a sharp screech in 1957, the biologist and his three-year-old daughter Susan protect their ears.
In 1958, a young Prince Charles and Princess Anne visit the BBC television studios to see Sir David and Cocky the cockatoo.
The presenter in 1965 at the BBC Television Center in White City, West London
In 1967, Sir David opens the London Colour Television Fair.
He would ride his Raleigh bike around the English countryside before World War II in search of fossils, grass snakes, newts, and dragonflies.
Prior to serving in the Royal Navy from 1947 to 1949, Sir David studied at the University of Cambridge. In 1952, he began working for the BBC, although it was behind the camera rather than in front of it since his superiors thought his teeth were too noticeable.
However, all changed in 1954 when 28-year-old Sir David and a cameraman were sent to locate a rare jungle bird for the television program Zoo Quest. After a zookeeper who was scheduled for the position became unwell, he was requested to take over, and the rest is history.
He was already married to Jane and had no intention of seeing the world. Before she passed away in 1997 from a brain haemorrhage, they were married for 47 years.
Robert and Susan were their two children. Susan, a former teacher, works with her father, while Robert is a professor in Australia.
Millions of Britons have watched footage of animals they had never seen on TV thanks to Sir David’s wildlife series and films, which have since crossed the century mark.
An estimated 500 million people have watched the groundbreaking Life On Earth, which took three years to produce and was his first colour series. It was released in 1979.
He has made a commitment to never retire and intends to continue making films on nature until the day he passes away.
He was born on May 8, 1926, and began collecting fossils as a child, which sparked his interest in the natural world. He attended Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester before earning a degree in Natural Sciences from Clare College in Cambridge.
Following his 1985 knighthood at Buckingham Palace, Sir David is shown with his wife Jane on the right and daughter Susan.
In 1990, the National Portrait Gallery in London exhibited a painting of the presenter and his brother Richard, a film actor.
In 1992, Sir David unveiled his waxwork at Madame Tussauds in London.
After winning a prestigious academic award at De Montfort Hall in 2006, Sir David and Richard attended the University of Leicester, where they were raised.
In 2008, Queen Elizabeth II grinned while Sir David delivered a portion of a Christmas Lecture at the Royal Institute of Great Britain.
He first developed an interest in nature while attending school in Leicestershire.
In a recent speech, he expressed sympathy for today’s kids. He could ride his bike on the newly congested roadways.
In 2020, he told The Times, “I think it’s terrible that children should grow up without knowing what a tadpole is.” Just terrible.
“I can’t criticise other people for raising their kids, but I used to be able to ride a bicycle 15 miles to a quarry and spend the day searching for fossils, dragonflies, grass snakes, and newts.”
Sir David has shown himself to be as courageous and creative as he is kind and diligent.
He writes his own screenplays, and even though he claims to detest writing, his book The Life of Birds won him a significant literary award before the show ever aired.
He is a devoted Londoner who feels as comfortable in the most untamed and isolated regions of the globe.
His ability to convey his extensive knowledge in an appealing and captivating manner, along with his charisma, has been widely imitated but seldom duplicated.
He was an ardent green activist both on and off screen long before environmental issues were making daily headlines.
State of the Planet and Are We Changing Planet Earth are two of his 2000 series. addressed environmental issues, including global warming, extensively in 2006.
Sir David receiving the 2009 Baftas Specialist Factual Award for Life in Cold Blood
In 2009, the TV host appears with Prince William at the Darwin Center’s launch at the Natural History Museum.
Sir David launches the 2012 Big Butterfly Count in Regent’s Park while sporting a Great Mormon butterfly from Southeast Asia on his nose.
Prior to a 2013 screening at the Natural History Museum, the naturalist chats with Princess Kate.
In 2017, Sir David received a £250,000 payment for the charity Fauna and Flora International from the People’s Postcode Lottery while holding ‘Inti’, an armadillo from Edinburgh Zoo.
At the 2018 National Television Awards, the host receives an Impact award for Blue Planet 2.
In 2018, Sir David opens an exhibition in York while experimenting with a virtual reality headset.
At the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the presenter was given the 2019 Chatham House Prize by the late Queen.
In 2019, the Prince of Wales, Sir David, King Charles, and Prince Harry attended the world premiere of Netflix’s “Our Planet” at the Natural History Museum in London.
The Princess of Wales and the naturalist during the 2019 Birkenhead naming ceremony for the arctic research ship named for Sir David
When he was younger, he frequently flew in economy class and would only accept improvements if they also applied to his crew.
According to reports, the BBC advised him to travel in business class when he reached 75.
He still frequently gives credit for his work to the people who operate behind the camera.
In frightening circumstances, such as being attacked by an army of ants and an enamoured capercaillie, Sir David has demonstrated a lack of fear.
After more than 70 years of studying life in all its forms, his perspective on nature has evolved.
Zoo Quest perpetuated the Victorian idea that wild animals should be tracked, trapped, and returned to British zoos for observation when his career first started.
In the series, he would go to a tropical nation alongside London Zoo employees to catch an animal for their collection.
The shift to a more reverent approach toward animals and the natural world was a major theme in his far later series Attenborough: 60 Years in the Wild.
As the man who brought colour television to Britain after taking over as Controller of BBC Two in 1965, David’s groundbreaking efforts on screen have been matched by those off.
He was named director of programs with editorial authority for both of the BBC’s TV networks four years later. Along with the classic series The Forsyte Saga, he brought popular sports like snooker to television.
Despite being tipped for the position of Director General, he was unable to stay behind a desk for very long. In 1973, he left administration to return to creating programs, saying, “I haven’t even seen the Galapagos Islands.”
Eastwards With Attenborough, which explored South East Asia, and The Tribal Eye, which looked at tribal art, were two among the many outstanding programs that quickly followed.
Speaking at the first citizen’s assembly on climate change in the United Kingdom (Climate Assembly UK) in 2020 at the Park Regis Hotel in Birmingham, Sir David Attenborough
At the 2020 opening of the Turner and the Thames exhibition at Turner’s House in Twickenham, southwest London, Sir David Attenborough peers through a telescope in JMW Turner’s bedroom, providing a perspective like to what the artist would have appreciated.
Sir David Attenborough and Boris Johnson (left) at the opening of the next Cop26 UN Climate Summit in 2020 at the Science Museum in London
At COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, Sir David Attenborough attends the Green Planet premiere at the Glasgow IMAX theatre in the Green Zone.
Speaking with members of the public at the first UK-wide Climate Assembly at the House of Commons in London in 2021, Sir David Attenborough
At Windsor Castle in 2022, King Charles III, the Prince of Wales at the time, awarded Sir David Attenborough a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George.
In 2023, schoolchildren from all around London planted a tree in Richmond Park as part of The Queen’s Green Canopy, with Sir David Attenborough and Clare Balding in the back right.
In 2023, Sir David Attenborough and schoolchildren from all over London planted a tree in Richmond Park in honour of Queen Elizabeth II for The Queen’s Green Canopy.
Sir David Attenborough during a private ceremony held at the Royal Society in London in 2024 to unveil a picture of the broadcaster and naturalist painted by Jonathan Yeo.
His incredibly popular 13-part series Life On Earth, which was considered the most ambitious series ever created by the BBC Natural History Unit, is thought to have been watched by 500 million people worldwide.
The Living Planet, the sequel, and The Trials of Life, the last installment of this trilogy, were released five years later.
Additionally, Sir David developed and produced two shorter series: Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives, which is about fossils, and The First Eden, which is about the long history of humanity’s relationship with the natural world in the regions surrounding the Mediterranean.
He debuted the epic The Private Life of Plants two years after the magnificent Life In The Freezer, a celebration of Antarctica, in 1993.
His longstanding dream of creating a unique film about the elusive birds of paradise—aptly named Attenborough in Paradise—was realised in 1996.
Many researchers have named newly found species after Sir David Attenborough because of his ability to make the natural world accessible to the general audience.
The naturalist has given his name to numerous plants and creatures, including butterflies, pygmy locusts, and the Attenborosaurus dinosaur.
Other species bearing his name include the following:
The wildflower known as Attenborough’s hawkweed, or Hieracium attenboroughianum, is the first extant species in the UK and Ireland to bear his name. It was found in the Brecon Beacons over ten years ago, but it took ten years for scientists to determine whether it was truly novel.
The uncommon Amazonian butterfly Euptychia attenboroughi is found in the lowland tropical forests of the upper Amazon basin in Brazil, Venezuela, and Colombia.
Trigonopterus attenboroughi is an Indonesian species of flightless weevil belonging to the genus Trigonopterus.
The pygmy grasshopper Electrotettix attenboroughi.
Nepenthes attenboroughii, often known as Attenborough’s pitcher plant, is native to Palawan Island in the Philippines.
The long-beaked echidna Zaglossus attenboroughi inhabits New Guinea’s highland woods.
The dinosaur Attenborosaurus conybeari inhabited Europe in the early Jurassic Period’s Sinemurian stage.
Ctenocheloides attenboroughi is a Madagascar ghost prawn with pectinate claw fingers.
The fossilised placoderm fish Materpiscis attenboroughi was discovered in the Gogo region of northwest Western Australia.
Blakea attenboroughii is a magnificent tree species that is unique to Ecuador.
He narrated the critically acclaimed Wildlife Specials in 1997 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the BBC Natural History Unit. The following year, he finished a massive 10-part series for the BBC called The Life of Birds.
He narrated The Blue Planet in 2001 and The Life of Mammals in 2002.
2005 saw the release of Life in the Undergrowth, which was followed in 2006 by the ground-breaking Planet Earth, a five-year-long series that was the first to be shot in high definition and the most costly nature documentary series ever commissioned by the BBC.
He then released Life in Cold Blood in 2008, Frozen Planet in 2011, and the six-part series Africa in 2013.
Sir David continued at an incredible rate, educating the public about the beauties of Earth even as he neared his 90th birthday.
He returned to the Great Barrier Reef for a three-part series in 2016. In Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur, he recounted the tale of the discovery and reconstruction of the largest known dinosaur—a new species of titanosaur—in Argentina.
In 2016, the six one-hour natural history shows that made up Planet Earth II were available for appointment watching.
After suspenseful footage of a newly hatched iguana just avoiding racer snakes had the country on the tip of their seats, the show even earned a Bafta for the year’s must-see moment.
He continued to labour at an outstanding rate into his 90s, while the majority of his peers retired.
A sequel to his popular 2018 series Dynasties, which explored the hidden lives of animals as they battled for their families, debuted in 2022.
Our Planet, Sir David’s first significant Netflix series, examined Earth’s habitats, biodiversity, and the effects of climate change on all living things in 2019.
A Perfect Planet, Life in Colour, The Green Planet, Wild Isles, Prehistoric Planet, and a Frozen Planet sequel were among the other programs.
In 2023, Planet Earth III debuted, utilising high-speed cameras, lightweight drones, remotely controlled deep-sea submersibles, and other cutting-edge technologies to explore previously uncharted territory.
He remains a frequent presence on television, even as he gets closer to turning 100.
His most recent project, Wild London, features him exploring the local fauna, including rooftop peregrines and urban deer.
He has received honours from all over the world for his programs. He received the Queen’s Order of Merit in April 2005 for his outstanding achievements in the arts, sciences, and other fields.
In 1985, he received a knighthood.
He has won several honorary degrees and other honours over the years, including the Fellowship of the Royal Society.
In addition to serving as president of the Royal Society for Nature Conservation, Sir David is a trustee of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew and the British Museum.
He wed Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel in 1950; she passed away in 1997. The couple had a son and a daughter.
He has produced content for terrestrial broadcasters, streaming, HD and 3D, colour TV, and black-and-white TV.
Even though Sir David travels less as he approaches his 100th birthday, he remains a unique presence in British broadcasting and the public’s perception.
