Diploma Lecture 2006-2007

Diploma Lecture 27th April 2015

In the second episode, Fortey travels to the rainforests of Madagascar - an ancient island that has spawned some of the most extraordinary groups of plants and animals anywhere in the world.

In the final episode, Richard travels to Madeira to examine what happens to a volcanic island as it nears the end of its life-cycle and starts sinking back into the sea.

Diarmaid MacCulloch examines the concept of scepticism in Western Christianity.

For one night only, Professor Brian Cox goes unplugged in a specially recorded programme from the lecture theatre of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. In his own inimitable style, Brian takes an audience of famous faces, scientists and members of the public on a journey through some of the most challenging concepts in physics.

Absolute Zero is the ultimate limit of cold – a Holy Grail as exciting for scientists as the North and South Poles were to the great polar explorers. The Conquest of Cold is an epic journey from dark beginnings to an ultra-cool frontier.

The Conquest of Cold charts the attempts of many great names in science such as Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday and Antoinne Lavoisier to grapple with the perplexing mystery of cold.

The first of three programmes in which nuclear physicist Professor Jim Al-Khalili tells the story of the greatest scientific discovery ever - that everything is made of atoms.

Professor Al-Khalili takes us from the discovery of the atom to the development of quantum mechanics

This episode tackles world-changing discoveries such as radioactivity, the Atom Bomb and the Big Bang, and tries to answer the biggest questions of all - why are we here and how were we made?

Al-Khalili discovers that there might be parallel universes in which different versions of us exist, and finds out that empty space isn’t empty at all, but seething with activity

David Attenborough returns to the island of Madagascar on a very personal quest.

Over three very personal films, Sir David Attenborough looks back at the unparalleled changes in natural history that he has witnessed during his 60-year career

Sir David Attenborough gives his unique perspective on over half a century of innovation in wildlife filmmaking - developments that have brought ever more breathtaking and intimate images of wildlife to our television screens, changing our view of life on the planet forever.

David Attenborough reviews the most exciting scientific discoveries that have transformed our view of life on earth during his lifetime. How and where did life first begin? How do continents move? How do animals communicate? And why do they behave the way they do?

Sir David Attenborough reflects on the dramatic impact that humankind has had on the natural world within his own lifetime. He tells the surprising and deeply personal story of the changes he has seen, of the pioneering conservationists with who he has worked - and of the global revolution in attitudes towards nature that has taken place within the last six decades.

Using the latest camera technology, David Attenborough reveals the extraordinary ways in which animals use colour: to win a mate, to fight off rivals and to warn enemies.

David Attenborough reveals the extraordinary ways that some animals use colour to hide and disappear into the background.

Phil Agland revisits the Baka Pygmy family he filmed 25 years ago in his BAFTA award winning documentary 'Baka: People of the Rainforest'. An extraordinary journey into the heart of the rainforest in Cameroon.

Artist and writer Matt Collings takes the plunge into an alien world of equations. He asks top scientists to help him understand five of the most famous equations in science, talks to Stephen Hawking about his equation for black holes and comes face to face with a particle of anti-matter.

How scientist James Lovelock came to see the Earth as a holistic, self-regulating system.

In the first of a three-part series, Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell describes how she discovered pulsars, the by-products of supernova explosions which make all life in the universe possible. She describes the moments of despair and jubilation as the discovery unfolded and her excitement as pulsars took the scientific world by storm.

The final part of this series looking at three brilliant contemporary scientists features Sir Tim Hunt, awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the mechanism of how cells divide - a discovery fundamental to the life and growth of every single creature on the planet, as well as a vital clue into the mystery of cancer.

Influential and respected scientists explain how their unique scientific perspectives have redefined how we think about the world around us

Physicist Professor Andre Geim\'s 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.

For paleontologist Professor Jenny Clack, who solved one of the greatest mysteries in the history of life on Earth, success was far from inevitable. 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.

Professor Richard Dawkins reveals how he came to write his explosive first book The Selfish Gene, a work that was to divide the scientific community and make him the most influential evolutionary biologist of his generation. He also explores how this set him on the path to becoming an outspoken spokesman for atheism.

Series which tells the story of how people came to understand the natural order of the plant world, and how the quest to discover how plants grow uncovered the secret to life on the planet.

What makes plants grow is a simple enough question. The answer turns out to be one of the most complicated and fascinating stories in science and took over 300 years to unravel.