GoKawiilIt is one of the most memorable moments in natural-history film-making: two young mountain gorillas playing with the broadcaster David Attenborough in Rwanda, later joined by the gorillas’ watchful mother. Attenborough is in his element, quietly demolishing a widely held perception — bolstered over decades by films such as King Kong — that these shy and peaceful creatures pose a violent threat to humans.
The clip, filmed in 1978 for the landmark BBC series Life on Earth: A Natural History, demonstrates what has become Attenborough’s trademark over his 70-year career: the communication of new, surprising and complex phenomena by showing rather than telling. There’s no lecture here — just curiosity, mischief and arresting visual impact.
Attenborough turns 100 on 8 May. Here, Nature salutes him and celebrates his unparalleled impact as a science communicator who has brought nature closer to many millions of people. We also pay tribute in an immersive article that shows his extraordinary life in pictures (see go.nature.com/4wddktw). The inspiration he provides must continue to shape efforts to conserve the natural world.
A scientist and communicator
It’s hard to overstate Attenborough’s influence on science broadcasting. In the early decades of television, programmes fronted by experts usually involved men giving lectures to the camera, with photography and graphics having a secondary role. Attenborough was no less an expert and, unusually for someone at the BBC at the time, had studied science: geology and zoology at the University of Cambridge, UK. But he brought a more involved, engaging approach, getting out into the field. His films are a personal journey of discovery, but the spotlight is shared.
A life in pictures: celebrating David Attenborough at 100
Life on Earth, a 13-part series of hour-long episodes that aired in 1979, told a sweeping story of the origins and evolution of life. It took three years to make, and Attenborough and his crew travelled 2.1 million kilometres to 100 locations in 49 countries, filming 650 species. In letting the cameras (and his now-familiar enthused whisper) do the talking, he took full advantage of the beginning of colour television — an innovation he had been instrumental in bringing to the United Kingdom, during a stint as the controller of the television channel BBC2 in the 1960s. The series was watched by an estimated 500 million people worldwide — more than one-tenth of the global population at the time.
Many of the scenes in Life on Earth had never before been captured on camera, and the series spotlighted not just charismatic megafauna, but also the wonders of life at all scales. One of the most memorable segments involves Darwin’s frogs (Rhinoderma darwinii), a tiny species found in the forests of Chile and Argentina. The males collect and incubate fertilized eggs in their mouths, before dramatically releasing the newly developed froglets.
We are all broadcasters now
Attenborough followed Life on Earth with ever-more-ambitious films on subjects such as mammals, birds and life in the deep ocean, culminating in two further landmark series: Planet Earth and Blue Planet, which he narrated well into his later years. For much of this time, only relatively few well-financed broadcasters had the resources to take on such projects. The BBC’s budget for Life on Earth reached an estimated £1 million (then equivalent to around US$2 million), according to Jean-Baptiste Gouyon, a science-communication researcher at University College London who has studied Attenborough’s documentaries (J.-B. Guoyon BBC Wildlife Documentaries in the Age of Attenborough, 2019). It was an astronomical sum at the time. Today, public-service broadcasters such as the BBC are under considerable financial and political pressure, and so are less likely to take on such risky projects.
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