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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nMr. Attenborough was born in London in 1926 and spent his youth on the campus of what is today the University of Leicester, where his father Frederick Attenborough was second principal. In a moment that would define his life, he was scouring rocks in the English countryside in the late 1930s, when he split one open with a hammer \u2014 revealing the fossil of a marine mollusk. \u201cMy eyes were the first to see it since its occupant died 200 million years ago,\u201d he said in a 2009 documentary.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1979, Mr. Attenborough released \u201cLife on Earth\u201d on the BBC, a four-year labor of love that was filmed in more than 100 locations and explored the evolution of life of the planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***********************<\/p>\n\n\n\n The series was the first to capture footage of several species and their behaviors, including the courtship displays of birds of paradise, according to the BBC. It also featured a striking moment in Rwanda, when Mr. Attenborough sat among a group of gorillas<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n **************************<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn the early 1950s, when Attenborough joined the BBC, natural history television had been mostly conceived of as a specialist genre catering for amateur naturalists,\u201d Jean-Baptiste Gouyon, a professor of science communication at University College London, wrote for The Conversation U.K<\/a>. \u201cBy the 1980s, he had helped transform it into one of the most popular genres of TV programming and a powerful conduit for science communication.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n ************************<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2017, he narrated \u201cBlue Planet II,\u201d which raised an alarm about plastic pollution, and in 2019, he narrated Netflix\u2019s \u201cOur Planet,\u201d a series that stressed the harm humankind has done to the natural world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***********************<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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