Title	Wired
Image file	wired logo.svg
Editor	Chris Anderson
Editor title	Editor-in-Chief
Previous editor	Louis Rossetto
Frequency	Monthly
total circulation	798,020
circulation year	2011
Category	Business, technology, lifestyle, thought leadership
Company	Condé Nast
Firstdate	January 1993
Country	United States
Language	English
Website
Issn	1059-1028 }}

''Wired'' is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

It now has two international editions: ''Wired UK'' and ''Wired Italia''.

In its earliest colophons ''Wired'' credited Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan as its "patron saint." From the beginning, the strongest immediate influence on the magazine's editorial outlook came from the techno-utopian agenda of co-founder Stewart Brand and his long-time associate Kevin Kelly.

From 1998 to 2006, ''Wired'' magazine and ''Wired News'' (which publishes at Wired.com) had separate owners. However, throughout that time, ''Wired News'' remained responsible for reprinting ''Wired'' magazine's content online, due to a business agreement made when Condé Nast purchased the magazine (but not the website). In July 2006, Condé Nast announced an agreement to buy ''Wired News'' for $25 million, reuniting the magazine with its website.

''Wired'' is known for coining new terms, such as "the long tail" and "crowdsourcing". It is also well known for its annual tradition of handing out Vaporware Awards which recognize "products, videogames and other nerdy tidbits pitched, promised and hyped, but never delivered".

History

The magazine was founded by American journalist Louis Rossetto and his partner Jane Metcalfe in 1993 with initial backing from software entrepreneur Charlie Jackson and eclectic academic Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab, who was a regular columnist for six years, through 1998 and wrote the book ''Being Digital''. The founding designers were John Plunkett and Barbara Kuhr (Plunkett+Kuhr), beginning with a 1991 prototype and continuing through the first five years of publication, 1993–98.

''Wired'', which touted itself as "the Rolling Stone of technology," made its debut at the Macworld conference on January 2, 1993. A great success at its launch, it was lauded for its vision, originality, innovation and cultural impact. In its first four years, the magazine won two National Magazine Awards for General Excellence and one for Design.

The founding executive editor of ''Wired'', Kevin Kelly, was formerly one of the editors of the ''Whole Earth Catalog'' and the ''Whole Earth Review'', and he brought with him many contributing writers from those publications. Six authors of the first ''Wired'' issue (1.1) had written for ''Whole Earth Review'', most notably Bruce Sterling and Stewart Brand. Other contributors to ''Whole Earth'' appeared in ''Wired'', including William Gibson, who was featured on ''Wired'''s cover in its first year and whose article "Disneyland with the Death Penalty" in issue 1.4 resulted in the publication being banned in Singapore.

''Wired'' co-founder Louis Rossetto claimed in the magazine's first issue that "the Digital Revolution is whipping through our lives like a Bengali typhoon," yet despite the fact that Kelly was involved in launching the WELL, an early source of public access to the Internet and even earlier non-Internet online experience, ''Wired'''s first issue de-emphasized the Internet, and covered interactive games, cell-phone hacking, digital special effects, military simulations, and Japanese otaku. However, the first issue did contain a few references to the internet, including online-dating and internet sex, and a tutorial on installing a "bozo filter". The last page, a column written by Nicholas Negroponte, was written in the style of an e-mail message, but contained obviously fake, non-standard e-mail addresses. By the third issue in the fall of 1993 the "Net Surf" column began listing interesting FTP sites, Usenet newsgroups, and e-mail addresses, at a time when the numbers of these things were small and this information was still extremely novel to the public. ''Wired'' was among the first magazines to list the email address of its authors and contributors.

Associate publisher Kathleen Lyman (formerly of News Corporation and Ziff Davis) was brought on board to launch ''Wired'' with an advertising base of major technology and consumer advertisers. Lyman, along with Simon Ferguson (''Wired'''s first advertising manager), introduced revolutionary ad campaigns by a diverse group of industry leaders—such as Apple Computer, Intel, Sony, Calvin Klein, and Absolut—to the readers of the first technology publication with a lifestyle slant.

The magazine was quickly followed by a companion website HotWired, a book publishing division, HardWired, a Japanese edition, and a short-lived British edition, ''Wired UK''. ''Wired UK'' was relaunched in April 2009. In 1994, John Battelle, co-founding editor, commissioned Jules Marshall to write a piece on the Zippies. The cover story broke records for being one of the most publicized stories of the year and was used to promote Wired's HotWired news service.

HotWired itself spawned dozens of websites including Webmonkey, the search engine Hotbot, and a weblog, Suck.com. In June 1998, the magazine even launched its own stock index, ''The Wired Index'', since July 2003 called ''The Wired 40''.

The fortune of the magazine and allied enterprises corresponded closely to that of the dot-com bubble. In 1996, Rossetto and the other participants in Wired Ventures attempted to take the company public with an IPO. The initial attempt had to be withdrawn in the face of a downturn in the stock market, and especially the internet sector, during the summer of 1996. The second try was also unsuccessful.

Rossetto and Metcalfe lost control of Wired Ventures to financial investors Providence Equity Partners in May 1998, who quickly sold off the company in pieces. ''Wired'' was purchased by Advance Publications, who assigned it to Advance's subsidiary, New York-based publisher Condé Nast Publications (while keeping ''Wired'''s editorial offices in San Francisco). Wired Digital (wired.com, hotbot.com, webmonkey.com, etc.) was purchased by Lycos.com and run independently from the rest of the magazine until 2006 when it was sold by Lycos to Advance Publications, returning the websites back to the same company that published the magazine.

The Anderson era

''Wired'' survived the dot-com bubble and found a new direction under editor-in-chief Chris Anderson, who took on the job in June 2001 and has made the magazine's coverage "more mainstream".

Under Anderson, ''Wired'' has produced some widely noted articles, including the April 2003 "Welcome to the Hydrogen Economy" story, the November 2003 "Open Source Everywhere" issue (which put Linus Torvalds on the cover and articulated the idea that the open-source method was taking off outside of software, including encyclopedias as evidenced by Wikipedia), the February 2004 "Kiss Your Cubicle Goodbye" issue (which presented the outsourcing issue from both American and Indian perspectives), and an October 2004 article by Chris Anderson, which coined the popular term "long tail".

The November 2004 issue of ''Wired'' was published with ''The Wired CD''. All of the songs on the CD were released under various Creative Commons licenses, an attempt to push alternative copyright into the spotlight. Most of the songs were contributed by major artists, including the Beastie Boys, My Morning Jacket, Paul Westerberg, David Byrne, and Le Tigre.

In recent years ''Wired'' has won several industry awards. In 2005 the magazine received the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in the category of 500,000 to 1,000,000 subscribers. That same year Anderson won Advertising Age's editor of the year award. In May 2007, the magazine again won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence. In 2008, ''Wired'' was nominated for three National Magazine Awards and won the ASME for Design. It also took home 14 Society of Publication Design Awards, including the Gold for Magazine of the Year. In 2009, ''Wired'' was nominated for four National Magazine Awards -- including General Excellence, Design, Best Section (Start), and Integration -- and won three: General Excellence, Design and Best Section (Start). David Rowan from ''Wired UK'' was awarded the BSME Launch of the Year 2009 award. On December 14, 2009, ''Wired'' magazine was named Magazine of the Decade by the editors of AdWeek.

In 2006, writer Jeff Howe and editor Mark Robinson coined the term ''crowdsourcing'' in the June issue.

On February 19, 2009, Condé Nast Italia launched the Italian edition of ''Wired'' and Wired.it. On April 2, 2009, Condé Nast relaunched the UK edition of ''Wired'', edited by David Rowan, and launched Wired.co.uk, which is now run by ex-CNET editor Nate Lanxon.

On August 15, 2009 ''Wired'' writer, Evan Ratliff "vanished" attempting to keep his whereabouts secret saying "I will try to stay hidden for 30 days." A $5,000 reward was offered to his finder(s). Ratliff was found September 8 in New Orleans by a team effort, which was written about by Ratliff in a later issue.

On May 27, 2010, ''Wired'' released its Tablet edition, first available on the iPad. Embraced by consumers and heralded as the beginning of a new era in publishing, the Wired iPad edition was downloaded an average of 17 times a minute for the first 24 hours, netting 24,000+ paid subscriptions. Over the ensuing days, Apple named the Wired Tablet Edition, "The App of the Week," making it the first media brand to earn this acknowledgment; and the Wired App remained the #1 Paid Download on iTunes for 5 consecutive days. Close to three weeks following the release of this Tablet Edition, Wired had sold 90,000+ copies - exceeding the average monthly newsstand sales of its print edition.

In October and November 2010, ''Wired'' found itself embroiled in some controversy after many customers were unable to download the November issue of the Tablet edition after having been charged for it. Wired was in a tricky position, as the error message appeared to be related to the Adobe development suite they were using to put together the digital edition, and because individual issues are purchased through Apple's App Store, Wired was unable to issue refunds directly to affected customers. As of mid-November 2010, the issue had not been resolved, and Wired released the December issue prior to fixing the issue with the November edition. The impact on sales (if any) of later issues related to the negative feedback from disgruntled Wired customers is unknown at this time.

NextFest

From 2004 to 2008, ''Wired'' organized an annual "festival of innovative products and technologies". A NextFest had also been planned for 2009, but it was later canceled.

2004: May 14–16 at the Fort Mason Center, San Francisco

2005: June 24–26 at Navy Pier, Chicago

2006: September 28 – October 1 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, New York City

2007: September 13–16 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles

2008: September 27 – October 12 at Millennium Park in Chicago

Supplement

''Geekipedia'' is a supplement to Wired.

Contributors

Over the years, ''Wired'''s writers have included Jorn Barger, John Perry Barlow, John Battelle, Paul Boutin, Stewart Brand, Gareth Branwyn, Po Bronson, Scott Carney, Michael Chorost, Douglas Coupland, James Daly, Joshua Davis, J. Bradford DeLong, Mark Dery, David Diamond, Patrick Di Justo, Cory Doctorow, Esther Dyson, Mark Frauenfelder, Simson Garfinkel, William Gibson, Dan Gillmor Mike Godwin, George Gilder, Lou Ann Hammond, Danny Hillis, Steven Johnson, Bill Joy, Jon Katz, Leander Kahney, Richard Kadrey, Jaron Lanier, Lawrence Lessig, Paul Levinson, Steven Levy, John Markoff, Wil McCarthy, Glyn Moody, Charles Platt, Josh Quittner, Spencer Reiss, Howard Rheingold, Rudy Rucker, Paul Saffo, Evan Schwartz, Peter Schwartz, Alex Steffen, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, John Hodgman, Kevin Warwick, Dave Winer, and Gary Wolf. Guest editors have included Rem Koolhaas, James Cameron, Will Wright, and JJ Abrams.

See also

Louis Rossetto

References

External resources

''Wired'' (owned by Condé Nast Publications)

''Wired UK website'' (owned by Condé Nast Publications)

''Wired image board''

''Wired Italy website''

"WIRED Store"

"WIRED Business Conference"

''Wired Netvibes Universe''

Back Catalog Article Listing/Rating

NextFest

The 'Future of Green' at WIRED NextFest

''Wired Science'' TV show on PBS

VIDEO Wired Creative Director Scott Dadich on designing the magazine- on [ABCFora]

"Wired UK: what nearly happened", an article on the rise and fall of ''Wired UK''

The short-lived ''Wired UK''

List of ''Wired UK'' employees

''Wired UK'' archive - reproduces some of the articles that appeared in the magazine.

Wired Magazine Covers Timeline

''Wired'' circulation and demographics

Category:American computer magazines Category:American lifestyle magazines Category:Condé Nast Publications Category:Magazines established in 1993 Category:Science and technology magazines Category:Whole Earth * Category:American monthly magazines

bn:ওয়াইয়ার্ড (ম্যাগাজিন) bg:Wired (списание) ca:Wired de:Wired es:Wired fr:Wired (magazine) he:wired ko:와이어드 (잡지) it:Wired nl:Wired ja:WIRED (雑誌) no:Wired Magazine pl:Wired pt:Wired ro:Wired ru:Wired fi:Wired sv:Wired magazine ta:வயர்ட் tr:Wired (dergi) zh:连线

name	Neill Blomkamp
birth date	September 17, 1979
birth place	Johannesburg, South Africa
occupation	Director
years active	1996–present
website	}}

Neill Blomkamp (born 17 September 1979) is a Afrikaaner-Canadian film and advertisement writer and director. Blomkamp employs a documentary-style, hand-held, cinéma vérité technique, blending naturalistic and photo-realistic computer-generated effects. He is best known as the co-writer and director of critically acclaimed ''District 9'', his only feature film to date. He is based out of Vancouver, British Columbia.

''Time'' named Blomkamp as one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2009.

Early life and career

Blomkamp was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. At 16, he met Sharlto Copley who had also attended Redhill High School in Johannesburg. Copley provided Blomkamp with the use of computers at his production company in order to pursue his passion and talent for 3D animation and design - in return, Blomkamp assisted Copley in creating 3D work for pitches on various projects. His family moved to Vancouver when Blomkamp was 18, where he enrolled in Vancouver Film School. In 2003, Blomkamp was hired to illustrate photo-real future aircraft for Popular Science's "Next century in Aviation" and in 2004 was hired to illustrate "The Future of the Automobile". Blomkamp worked as a visual effects artist at The Embassy Visual Effects in Vancouver as well as Rainmaker Digital Effects.

In 2007, Blomkamp directed a trilogy of live-action short films (known collectively as ''Landfall'') set in the ''Halo'' universe, to promote the release of ''Halo 3''. In 2008, ''Halo: Combat Evolved'', the first of the three installments, won the Cannes Lions 2008 – Film Lions Grand Prix.

Blomkamp was then slated to direct his first feature-length film, an adaptation of the ''Halo'' series of video games, produced by Peter Jackson. Peter Jackson had come to know about Blomkamp after viewing a reel of his commercial work and shorts shot in his off time. The four shorts that got him noticed included ''Tetra Vaal'', a faux advertisement for a third-world robotic police that established Neill Blomkamp's signature style of mixing lo-fi production with seamless CGI; ''Alive in Joburg'', a gritty "documentary" about extraterrestrials marooned in Johannesburg; ''Tempbot'', an ''Office Space''-esque spoof; and ''Yellow'', a short film based on the colour yellow for Adidas' "Adicolor" campaign, which portrays a globe-trotting AI gone rogue.

When funding for the ''Halo'' film collapsed, Peter Jackson decided to produce ''District 9'' instead, an adaptation of Blomkamp's earlier short film ''Alive in Joburg'', which had been produced by Hansen and Copley. The film, directed by Blomkamp and starring Copley, was released in mid-August 2009, to rave reviews.

On October 2010, a video was released on the iPad version of the Wired Magazine, credited to Neill Blomkamp, which shows an amateur recording of two young men who find a dead mutated creature in a puddle of mud while driving down a countryside road. The creature, a dog-sized mix between a pig and a lizard, presents a tattooed seal on its side that reads "18.12 AGM Heartland Pat. Pend. USA". Also, "AGM Heartland" was trademarked for its use in an entertainment-oriented website. It is yet unknown whether this video holds any relation to Blomkamp's current project, ''Elysium''.

Filmography

Feature films

''District 9'' (2009) (co-writer, director)

''Elysium'' (2013) (writer, director)

''Chappie'' (N/A)

Short films

''Tetra Vaal'' (2004) (director, visual FX)

''Alive in Joburg'' (2005) (director, writer, visual FX)

''Yellow'' (2006) (director, visual FX)

''Tempbot'' (2006) (director)

''Halo: Landfall'' (2007) (director)

Commercials

Nike - Crab (2003) / Evolution (2004) Citroën C4 - Alive with technology (2004) Gatorade - Rain (2006)

Other credits

''Stargate SG-1'' (1998) (3D animator)

''First Wave'' (1998) (3D animator)

''Mercy Point'' (1998) (3D animator)

''Aftershock: Earthquake in New York'' (1999) (3D animator)

''Dark Angel'' (2000) (lead animator)

''Art of Dying'' music video - Day Survive (2001) (director, visual FX)

''3000 Miles to Graceland'' (2001) (lead 3D animator)

''Smallville'' (2001) (3D animator)

''BV-01'' (2005) (special thanks)

''Best Ever Ads 2'' (2006) (himself)

''Crossing the Line'' (2008) (additional director)

Recognition

2004, First Boards Awards - "One of the top five directors to watch"

2004, Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival - "Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors Showcase"

2004, Shark Awards (shortlisted)

2005, VES awards "Outstanding VFX in a commercial" for ''Citroen - Alive with technology''

2008, Cannes Lions 2008 - Film Lions- Grand Prix - ''Halo: Combat''

2009, Nominated - Satellite Award for Best Director & Satellite Award for Best Adapted Screenplay - ''District 9''

2009, Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay - ''District 9''

2009, Won - Bradbury Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America - ''District 9''

2010, Nominated - Academy Award for Writing (Adapted Screenplay), Nomination for Academy Award for Best Picture 2009 - ''District 9'' (Written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell)

References

External links

Website for Spy Films productions

Neill Blomkamp talking ''District 9'' at FEARnet

Alive in Joburg at www.spyfilms.com

Neill Blomkamp interview at AMCtv.com

Neill Blomkamp interview with Comic-Con

Category:1979 births Category:Afrikaner people Category:Living people Category:White South African people Category:People from Johannesburg Category:People from Vancouver Category:South African emigrants to Canada Category:South African film directors Category:Short film directors Category:Visual effects artists Category:Canadian people of South African descent Category:Canadian film directors

de:Neill Blomkamp fr:Neill Blomkamp it:Neill Blomkamp ja:ニール・ブロムカンプ no:Neill Blomkamp pl:Neill Blomkamp pt:Neill Blomkamp ru:Бломкамп, Нил fi:Neill Blomkamp sv:Neill Blomkamp

name	Sir David Attenborough
birth date	May 08, 1926
birth place	Isleworth, London, England
residence	Richmond, London
nationality	British
alma mater
occupation
title
spouse	Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel (m. 1950–1997, her death)
children
footnotes	}}

Sir David Frederick Attenborough () OM, CH, CVO, CBE, FRS, FZS, FSA (born 8 May 1926 in London, England) is a broadcaster and naturalist. His career as the respected face and voice of natural history programmes has endured for more than 50 years. He is best known for writing and presenting the nine ''Life'' series, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, which collectively form a comprehensive survey of all life on the planet. He is also a former senior manager at the BBC, having served as controller of BBC Two and director of programming for BBC Television in the 1960s and 1970s.

He is a younger brother of director, producer and actor Richard Attenborough.

Early life and family

Attenborough grew up in College House on the campus of the University of Leicester, where his father, Frederick, was principal. He is the middle of three sons (his elder brother, Richard, became an actor/film director and his younger brother, John Michael Attenborough, an executive at Alfa Romeo). During World War II his parents also adopted two Jewish refugee girls from Europe.

Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones and other natural specimens. He received encouragement in this pursuit at age seven, when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his "museum". A few years later, one of his adoptive sisters gave him a piece of amber filled with prehistoric creatures; some 50 years later, it would be the focus of his programme ''The Amber Time Machine''.

Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and then won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945, where he studied geology and zoology and obtained a degree in Natural Sciences. In 1947, he was called up for National Service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth.

In 1950, Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel; the marriage lasted until her death in 1997. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan.

His son, Robert Attenborough, is a senior lecturer in Bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra.

First years at BBC

After leaving the Navy, Attenborough took a position editing children's science textbooks for a publishing company. He soon became disillusioned with the work, however, and in 1950, he applied for a job as a radio talks producer with the BBC. Although he was rejected for this job, his CV later attracted the interest of Mary Adams, head of the Talks (factual broadcasting) department of the BBC's fledgling television service. Attenborough, like most Britons at that time, did not own a television, and he had seen only one programme in his life. However, he accepted Adams' offer of a three-month training course, and in 1952, he joined the BBC full time. Initially discouraged from appearing on camera because Adams thought his teeth were too big, he became a producer for the Talks Department, which handled all non-fiction broadcasts. His early projects included the quiz show ''Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?'' and ''Song Hunter'', a series about folk music presented by Alan Lomax.

Attenborough's association with natural history programmes began when he produced and presented the three-part series ''The Pattern of Animals''. The studio-bound programme featured animals from London Zoo, with the naturalist Sir Julian Huxley discussing their use of camouflage, aposematism and courtship displays. Through this programme, Attenborough met Jack Lester, the curator of the zoo's reptile house, and they decided to make a series about an animal-collecting expedition. The result was ''Zoo Quest'', first broadcast in 1954, which Attenborough presented at short notice, due to Lester being taken ill.

In 1957, the BBC Natural History Unit was formally established in Bristol. Attenborough was asked to join it, but declined, not wishing to move from London where he and his young family were settled. Instead he formed his own department, the Travel and Exploration Unit, which allowed him to continue to front the ''Zoo Quest'' programmes as well as produce other documentaries, notably the ''Travellers’ Tales'' and ''Adventure'' series.

In the early 1960s, Attenborough resigned from the permanent staff of the BBC to study for a postgraduate degree in social anthropology at the London School of Economics, interweaving his study with further filming. However, he accepted an invitation to return to the BBC as Controller of BBC Two before he could finish the degree.

BBC administration

Attenborough became the Controller of BBC Two in March 1965, but had a clause inserted in his contract that would allow him to continue making programmes on an occasional basis. Later the same year, he filmed elephants in Tanzania, and in 1969, he made a three-part series on the cultural history of Bali. For the 1971 film ''A Blank on the Map'', he joined the first Western expedition to a remote highland valley in New Guinea to seek out an uncontacted tribe.

BBC Two was launched in 1964, but had struggled to capture the public's imagination. When Attenborough arrived as Controller, he quickly abolished the channel's quirky kangaroo mascot and shook up the schedule. With a mission to make BBC Two's output diverse and different from that offered by other networks, he began to establish a portfolio of programmes that defined the channel's identity for decades to come. Under his tenure, music, the arts, entertainment, archaeology, experimental comedy, travel, drama, sport, business, science and natural history all found a place in the weekly schedules. Often, an eclectic mix was offered within a single evening's viewing. Programmes he commissioned included ''Man Alive'', ''Call My Bluff'', ''Chronicle'', ''Life'', ''One Pair of Eyes'', ''The Old Grey Whistle Test'', ''Monty Python's Flying Circus'' and ''The Money Programme''. When BBC Two became the first British channel to broadcast in colour in 1967, Attenborough took advantage by introducing televised snooker, as well as bringing rugby league to British television on a regular basis via the BBC2 Floodlit Trophy.

One of his most significant decisions was to order a 13-part series on the history of Western art, to show off the quality of the new UHF colour television service that BBC Two offered. Broadcast to universal acclaim in 1969, ''Civilisation'' set the blueprint for landmark authored documentaries, which were informally known as "tombstone" or "sledgehammer" projects. Others followed, including Jacob Bronowski's ''The Ascent of Man'' (also commissioned by Attenborough), and Alistair Cooke's ''America''. Attenborough thought that the story of evolution would be a natural subject for such a series. He shared his idea with Chris Parsons, a producer at the Natural History Unit, who came up with the title ''Life on Earth'' and returned to Bristol to start planning the series. Attenborough harboured a strong desire to present the series himself, but this would not be possible so long as he remained in a management post.

In 1969, Attenborough was promoted to Director of Programmes, making him responsible for the output of both BBC channels. His tasks, which included agreeing budgets, attending board meetings and firing staff, were now far removed from the business of filming programmes. When Attenborough's name was being suggested as a candidate for the position of Director General of the BBC in 1972, he phoned his brother Richard to confess that he had no appetite for the job. Early the following year, he left his post to return to full-time programme making, leaving him free to write and present the planned natural history epic.

Return to broadcasting

After his resignation, Attenborough became a freelance broadcaster and immediately started work on his next project, a pre-arranged trip to Indonesia with a crew from the Natural History Unit. It resulted in the 1973 series ''Eastwards with Attenborough'', which was similar in tone to the earlier ''Zoo Quests'' but without the animal-collecting element.

On his return, he began to work on the scripts for ''Life on Earth''. Due to the scale of his ambition, the BBC decided to partner with an American network to secure the necessary funding. While the negotiations were proceeding he worked on a number of other television projects. He presented a series on tribal art (''The Tribal Eye'', 1975) and another on the voyages of discovery (''The Explorers'', 1975). He also presented a BBC children's series about cryptozoology entitled ''Fabulous Animals'' (1975), which featured mythical creatures such as the griffin and kraken. Eventually, the BBC signed a co-production deal with Turner Broadcasting and ''Life on Earth'' moved into production in 1976.

"Life" series

Beginning with ''Life on Earth'' in 1979, Attenborough set about creating a body of work which became a benchmark of quality in wildlife film-making and influenced a generation of documentary film-makers. The series also established many of the hallmarks of the BBC's natural history output. By treating his subject seriously and researching the latest discoveries, Attenborough and his production team gained the trust of the scientific community, who responded by allowing him to feature their subjects in his programmes. In Rwanda, for example, Attenborough and his crew were granted privileged access to film Dian Fossey's research group of mountain gorillas. Innovation was another factor in ''Life on Earth'''s success: new film-making techniques were devised to get the shots Attenborough wanted, with a focus on events and animals that were hitherto unfilmed. Computerised airline schedules, which had only recently been introduced, enabled the series to be elaborately devised so that Attenborough visited several locations around the globe in each episode, sometimes even changing continents mid-sentence. Although appearing as the on-screen presenter, he consciously restricted his pieces to camera to give his subjects top billing.

The success of ''Life on Earth'' prompted the BBC to consider a follow-up, and five years later, ''The Living Planet'' was screened. This time, Attenborough built his series around the theme of ecology, the adaptations of livings things to their environment. It was another critical and commercial success, generating huge international sales for the BBC. In 1990, ''The Trials of Life'' completed the original "Life" trilogy, looking at animal behaviour through the different stages of life. The series drew strong reactions from the viewing public for its sequences of killer whales hunting sea lions on a Patagonian beach and chimpanzees hunting and violently killing a colobus monkey.

In the 1990s, Attenborough continued to use the "Life" moniker for a succession of authored documentaries. In 1993, he presented ''Life in the Freezer'', the first television series to survey the natural history of Antarctica. Although past normal retirement age, he then embarked on a number of more specialised surveys of the natural world, beginning with plants. They proved a difficult subject for his producers, who had to deliver five hours of television featuring what are essentially immobile objects. The result, ''The Private Life of Plants'' (1995), showed plants as dynamic organisms by using time-lapse photography to speed up their growth.

Prompted by an enthusiastic ornithologist at the BBC Natural History Unit, Attenborough then turned his attention to the animal kingdom and in particular, birds. As he was neither an obsessive twitcher, nor a bird expert, he decided he was better qualified to make ''The Life of Birds'' (1998) on the theme of behaviour. The order of the remaining "Life" series was dictated by developments in camera technology. For ''The Life of Mammals'' (2002), low-light and infrared cameras were deployed to reveal the behaviour of nocturnal mammals. The series contains a number of memorable two shots of Attenborough and his subjects, which included chimpanzees, a blue whale and a grizzly bear. Advances in macro photography made it possible to capture natural behaviour of very small creatures for the first time, and in 2005, ''Life in the Undergrowth'' introduced audiences to the world of invertebrates.

At this point, Attenborough realised that he had spent 20 years unconsciously assembling a collection of programmes on all the major groups of terrestrial animals and plants — only reptiles and amphibians were missing. When ''Life in Cold Blood'' was broadcast in 2008, he had the satisfaction of completing the set, brought together in a DVD encyclopaedia called ''Life on Land''. In an interview that year, Attenborough was asked to sum up his achievement, and responded:

However, in 2010 Attenborough asserted that his forthcoming ''First Life'' — dealing with evolutionary history before ''Life on Earth'' — should also be included within the "Life" series. In the documentary ''Attenborough's Journey'' he stated, "This series, to a degree which I really didn't fully appreciate until I started working on it, really completes the set."

Other documentaries

Alongside the "Life" series, Attenborough has continued to work on other television documentaries, mainly in the natural history genre. He wrote and presented a series on man's influence on the natural history of the Mediterranean basin, ''The First Eden'', in 1987. Two years later, he demonstrated his passion for fossils in ''Lost Worlds Vanished Lives''.

Attenborough narrated every episode of ''Wildlife on One'', a BBC One wildlife series which ran for 253 episodes between 1977 and 2005. At its peak, it drew a weekly audience of eight to ten million, and the 1987 episode "Meerkats United" was voted the best wildlife documentary of all time by BBC viewers. He has also narrated over 50 episodes of ''Natural World'', BBC Two's flagship wildlife series. (Its forerunner, ''The World About Us'', was created by Attenborough in 1969, as a vehicle for colour television.) In 1997, he narrated the ''BBC Wildlife Specials'', each focussing on a charismatic species, and screened to mark the Natural History Unit's 40th anniversary.

As a writer and narrator, he continued to collaborate with the BBC Natural History Unit in the new millennium. Alastair Fothergill, a senior producer with whom Attenborough had worked on ''The Trials of Life'' and ''Life in the Freezer'', was making ''The Blue Planet'' (2001), the Unit's first comprehensive series on marine life. He decided not to use an on-screen presenter due to difficulties in speaking to camera through diving apparatus, but asked Attenborough to narrate the films. The same team reunited for ''Planet Earth'' (2006), the biggest nature documentary ever made for television, and the first BBC wildlife series to be shot in high definition. In 2009, Attenborough wrote and narrated ''Life'', a ten-part series focussing on extraordinary animal behaviour, and narrated ''Nature's Great Events'', which showed how seasonal changes trigger major natural spectacles.

By the turn of the millennium, Attenborough's authored documentaries were adopting a more overtly environmentalist stance. In ''State of the Planet'' (2000), he used the latest scientific evidence and interviews with leading scientists and conservationists to assess the impact of man's activities on the natural world. He later turned to the issues of global warming (''The Truth about Climate Change'', 2006) and human population growth (''How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?'', 2009). He also contributed a programme which highlighted the plight of endangered species to the BBC's ''Saving Planet Earth'' project in 2007, the 50th anniversary of the Natural History Unit.

Interestingly, although Attenborough's documentaries have attained immense popularity in the United States, several have never been made available on DVD in NTSC format, most notably those that cast doubt upon conservative religious or political positions. These include:

''Life on Earth'', which examines the evidence for evolution.

''State of the Planet''

''The Truth About Climate Change''

''First Life'', which examines the origin of life.

Current projects

Attenborough continues to work into his ninth decade, and is currently involved in a number of projects for the BBC and for Sky.

He is writing and presenting ''Frozen Planet'', a major new series for BBC One which examines the impact of a warming climate on the people and wildlife of the polar regions. He has also recently completed two projects for BBC Two. ''Madagascar'' (which first aired weekly between the 9 to 23 February 2011) a three-part series giving an overview of Madagascar's unique wildlife. The accompanying documentary ''Attenborough and the Giant Egg'' (which first aired on the 2nd of March 2011) features the elephant bird egg which Attenborough discovered on his first filming expedition to the island in the 1960s.

Attenborough is also forging a new partnership with Sky, working on documentaries for the broadcaster's new 3D network, Sky 3D. Their first collaboration is ''Flying Monsters 3D'', a film about pterosaurs which debuted on Christmas Day 2010. A second film, ''Penguin Island 3D'', has also been announced. Both are produced by Atlantic Productions, the company behind Attenborough's 2010 series ''First Life''.

Other work

From 1983, Attenborough worked on two environmentally themed musicals with the WWF and writers Peter Rose and Anne Conlon. ''Yanomamo'' was the first, about the Amazon rainforest, and the second, ''Ocean World'', premiered at the Royal Festival Hall in 1991. They were both narrated by Attenborough on their national tour, and recorded on to audio cassette. ''Ocean World'' was also filmed for Channel 4 and later released.

In 1990, he highlighted the case of Mahjoub Sharif as part of the BBC's ''Prisoners of Conscience'' series.

In January 2009, the BBC commissioned Attenborough to provide a series of 20 ten-minute monologues covering the history of nature. Entitled ''David Attenborough's Life Stories'', they are broadcast on Radio 4 in the Friday night slot vacated by Alistair Cooke's ''Letter from America''. Part of Radio 4's ''A Point of View'' strand, the talks are also available as podcasts.

He appeared in the 2009 Children's Prom at the BBC Promenade Concerts and in the Last Night of the Proms on 12 September 2009, playing a floor polisher in Sir Malcolm Arnold's "A Grand, Grand Overture" (after which he was "shot" by Rory Bremner, who was playing the gun).

Attenborough also serves on the advisory board of ''BBC Wildlife'' magazine.

Achievements, awards and recognition

{| style="float:right; background:#f9f9f9; border:1px solid darkgrey;" |- !align="left"|Styles and honours |- |

Mr David Attenborough (1926–1974)

Mr David Attenborough CBE (1974–1983)

Mr David Attenborough CBE FRS (1983–1985)

Sir David Attenborough CBE FRS (1985–1991)

Sir David Attenborough CVO CBE FRS (1991–1996)

Sir David Attenborough CH CVO CBE FRS (1996–2005)

Sir David Attenborough OM CH CVO CBE FRS (2005–)

|}

Attenborough's contribution to broadcasting and wildlife film-making has brought him international recognition. He has been called "the great communicator, the peerless educator" and "the greatest broadcaster of our time". His programmes are often cited as an example of what public service broadcasting should be, even by critics of the BBC, and has influenced a generation of wildlife film-makers.

Honorary titles

In 2010 it was reported that Attenborough has been given 29 honorary degrees by British universities, more than any other person. In 1980, he was honoured by the Open University, with whom he has had a close association throughout his career. He also has honorary Doctor of Science awards from the University of Cambridge (1984) and the University of Oxford (1988). In 2006, the two eldest Attenborough brothers returned to their home city to receive the title of Distinguished Honorary Fellows of the University of Leicester, "in recognition of a record of continuing distinguished service to the University." David Attenborough was previously awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the university in 1970, and was made an honorary Freeman of the City of Leicester in 1990.

Attenborough has received the title Honorary Fellow from Clare College, Cambridge (1980), the Zoological Society of London (1998), the Linnean Society (1999), the Institute of Biology (2000) and the Society of Antiquaries (2007).

Recognition

Attenborough has featured as the subject of a number of BBC television programmes. ''Life on Air'' (2002) examined the legacy of his work and ''Attenborough the Controller'' (2002) focused on his time in charge of BBC Two. He also featured prominently in ''The Way We Went Wild'' (2004), a series about natural history television presenters, and ''100 Years of Wildlife Films'' (2007), a special programme marking the centenary of the nature documentary. In 2006, British television viewers were asked to vote for their ''Favourite Attenborough Moments'' for a UKTV poll to coincide with the broadcaster's 80th birthday. The winning clip showed Attenborough observing the mimicry skills of the superb lyrebird.

Attenborough was named as the most trusted celebrity in Britain in a 2006 Reader's Digest poll,. and the following year he won ''The Culture Show'''s Living Icon Award. He has also been named among the 100 Greatest Britons in a 2002 BBC poll and is one of the top ten "Heroes of Our Time" according to ''New Statesman'' magazine.

He has the distinction of having a number of newly-discovered species and fossils being named in his honour. In 1993, after discovering that the Mesozoic reptile ''Plesiosaurus conybeari'' had not, in fact, been a true plesiosaur, the paleontologist Robert Bakker renamed the species ''Attenborosaurus conybeari''. A fossilised armoured fish discovered at the Gogo Formation, Western Australia in 2008 was given the name ''Materpiscis attenboroughi'', after Attenborough had filmed at the site and highlighted its scientific importance in ''Life on Earth''. The ''Materpiscis'' fossil is believed to be the earliest organism capable of internal fertilisation.

He has also lent his name to a species of Ecuadorian flowering tree, ''Blakea attenboroughi'', one of the world's largest carnivorous plants, ''Nepenthes attenboroughii'', and one of only four species of long-beaked echidna, the critically endangered ''Zaglossus attenboroughi'', discovered by explorer and zoologist Tim Flannery in the Cyclops Mountains of New Guinea in 1998.

In September 2009, London's Natural History Museum opened the Attenborough Studio, part of its Darwin Centre development.

Awards

1970: BAFTA Desmond Davis Award

1974: Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)

1980: BAFTA Fellowship

1983: Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS)

1985: Knighthood

1991: Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) for producing Queen Elizabeth II's Christmas broadcast for a number of years from 1986

1991: Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

1996: Companion of Honour (CH) "for services to nature broadcasting"

1998: International Cosmos Prize

2003: Michael Faraday Prize awarded by the Royal Society

2004: Descartes Prize for Outstanding Science Communication Actions

2004: Caird Medal of the National Maritime Museum

2005: Order of Merit (OM)

2005: Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest

2006: National Television Awards Special Recognition Award

2006: Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management - Institute Medal in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the public perception and understanding of ecology

2006: The Culture Show British Icon Award

2007: British Naturalists' Association Peter Scott Memorial Award

2009: BAFTA Specialist factual award for ''Life In Cold Blood''

2009: Prince of Asturias Award

2010: Fonseca Prize

2010: Queensland Museum Medal

Views and advocacy

Environmental causes

Attenborough's programmes have often included references to the impact of human society on the natural world. The last episode of ''The Living Planet'', for example, focuses almost entirely on humans' destruction of the environment and ways that it could be stopped or reversed. Despite this, he has been criticised for not giving enough prominence to environmental messages. Some environmentalists feel that programmes like Attenborough's give a false picture of idyllic wilderness and do not do enough to acknowledge that such areas are increasingly encroached upon by humans.

However, his closing message from ''State of the Planet'' was forthright:

The future of life on earth depends on our ability to take action. Many individuals are doing what they can, but real success can only come if there's a change in our societies and our economics and in our politics. I've been lucky in my lifetime to see some of the greatest spectacles that the natural world has to offer. Surely we have a responsibility to leave for future generations a planet that is healthy, inhabitable by all species.

Attenborough has subsequently become more vocal in his support of environmental causes. In 2005 and 2006, he backed a BirdLife International project to stop the killing of albatross by longline fishing boats. He gave public support to WWF's campaign to have 220,000 square kilometres of Borneo's rainforest designated a protected area. He also serves as a vice-president of BTCV, vice-president of Fauna and Flora International, president of Butterfly Conservation and president of Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust. In 2003 he launched an appeal to create a rainforest reserve in Ecuador in memory of Christopher Parsons, the producer of ''Life on Earth'' and a personal friend, who had died the previous year. The same year, he helped to launch ARKive, a global project instigated by Parsons to gather together natural history media into a digital library. ARKive is an initiative of Wildscreen, of which Attenborough is a patron. He later became patron of the World Land Trust, and an active supporter. He supported Glyndebourne in their successful application to obtain planning permission for a wind turbine in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and gave evidence at the planning inquiry arguing in favour of the proposal.

Attenborough has repeatedly said that he considers human overpopulation to be the root cause of many environmental problems. In ''The Life of Mammals'', he made a plea for humans to curb population growth so that other species will not be crowded out. In 2009, he became a patron of Population Matters, (formerly known as the Optimum Population Trust), a UK charity advocating sustainable human populations.

He has written and spoken publicly about the fact that, despite past scepticism, he believes the Earth's climate is warming in a way that is cause for concern, and that this can likely be attributed to human activity. He summed up his thoughts at the end of his 2006 documentary "Can We Save Planet Earth?" as follows:

In the past, we didn't understand the effect of our actions. Unknowingly, we sowed the wind and now, literally, we are reaping the whirlwind. But we no longer have that excuse: now we do recognise the consequences of our behaviour. Now surely, we must act to reform it — individually and collectively, nationally and internationally — or we doom future generations to catastrophe.

In a 2005 interview with ''BBC Wildlife'' magazine, Attenborough said he considered George W. Bush to be the era's top "environmental villain". In 2007, he further elaborated on the USA's consumption of energy in relation to its population. When asked if he thought America to be "the villain of the piece", he responded:

I don't think whole populations are villainous, but Americans are just extraordinarily unaware of all kinds of things. If you live in the middle of that vast continent, with apparently everything your heart could wish for just because you were born there, then why worry? [...] If people lose knowledge, sympathy and understanding of the natural world, they're going to mistreat it and will not ask their politicians to care for it.

Religion and creationism

In a December 2005 interview with Simon Mayo on BBC Radio Five Live, Attenborough stated that he considers himself an agnostic. When asked whether his observation of the natural world has given him faith in a creator, he generally responds with some version of this story, making reference to the ''Loa loa'' parasitic worm:

My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy'.

He has explained that he feels the evidence all over the planet clearly shows evolution to be the best way to explain the diversity of life, and that "as far as I'm concerned, if there is a supreme being then he chose organic evolution as a way of bringing into existence the natural world."

In a BBC Four interview with Mark Lawson, Attenborough was asked if he at any time had any religious faith. He replied simply, "No." He has also said "It never really occurred to me to believe in God".

In 2002, Attenborough joined an effort by leading clerics and scientists to oppose the inclusion of creationism in the curriculum of UK state-funded independent schools which receive private sponsorship, such as the Emmanuel Schools Foundation. In 2009, Attenborough stated that the Book of Genesis, by saying that the world was there for people to dominate, had taught generations that they can "dominate" the environment, and that this has resulted in the devastation of vast areas of the environment. Attenborough further explained to the science journal ''Nature'', "That's why Darwinism, and the fact of evolution, is of great importance, because it is that attitude which has led to the devastation of so much, and we are in the situation that we are in."

Also in early 2009, the BBC broadcast an Attenborough one-hour special, ''Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life''. In reference to the programme, Attenborough stated that "People write to me that evolution is only a theory. Well, it is not a theory. Evolution is as solid a historical fact as you could conceive. Evidence from every quarter. What is a theory is whether natural selection is the mechanism and the only mechanism. That is a theory. But the historical reality that dinosaurs led to birds and mammals produced whales, that's not theory." He strongly opposes creationism and its offshoot "intelligent design", saying that a survey that found a quarter of science teachers in state schools believe that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in science lessons was "really terrible".

In March 2009, Attenborough appeared on ''Friday Night with Jonathan Ross''. Attenborough stated that he felt evolution did not rule out the existence of a God and accepted the title of agnostic saying, "My view is: I don't know one way or the other but I don't think that evolution is against a belief in God."

BBC and public service broadcasting

Attenborough is a lifelong supporter of the BBC, public broadcasting and the television licence. He has said:

PSB, to me, is not about selecting individual programme strands here or there, financing them from some outside source and then foisting them upon commercial networks. Public Service Broadcasting, watched by a healthy number of viewers, with programmes financed in proportion to their intrinsic needs and not the size of the audience, can only effectively operate as a network — a network whose aim is to cater for the broadest possible range of interests, popular as well as less popular, a network that measures its success not only by its audience size but by the range of its schedule.

Public service broadcasting is one of the things that distinguishes this country and makes me want to live here. I have spent all my life in it. I would be very distressed if public service broadcasting was weakened. I have been at the BBC since 1952, and know the BBC is constantly being battered. It is today.

If you could demonstrate that the BBC was grossly extravagant there might be a case for saying OK take it away. But in fact the BBC per minute in almost every category is as cheap as you can find anywhere in the world and produces the best quality. If you take the money away, which part of the BBC will you remove? The BBC has gone through swingeing staff cuts. It has been cut to the bone, if you divert licence fee money elsewhere, you cut quality and services. There is always that threat from politicians who will say your licence fee is up for grabs. We will take it. There is a lot of people who want to see the BBC weakened. They talk of this terrible tax of the licence fee. Yet it is the best bargain that is going. Four radio channels and god knows how many TV channels. It is piffling.

There have always been politicians or business people who have wanted to cut the BBC back or stop it saying the sort of things it says. There's always been trouble about the licence and if you dropped your guard you could bet our bottom dollar there'd be plenty of people who'd want to take it away. The licence fee is the basis on which the BBC is based and if you destroy it, broadcasting... becomes a wasteland.

Attenborough expressed regret at some of the changes made to the BBC in the 1990s by Director-General John Birt, who introduced an internal market at the corporation, slimmed and even closed some departments and outsourced much of the corporation’s output to private production companies, in line with the Broadcasting Act 1990. He has said:

There is no question but that Birtism . . . has had some terrible results. On the other hand, the BBC had to change. Now it has to produce programmes no one else can do. Otherwise, forget the licence fee.

The Bristol Unit has suffered along with the rest of the BBC from recent staff cuts. Yet it remains confident in the belief that the BBC will maintain it, in spite of the vagaries of fashion, because the Corporation believes that such programmes deserve a place in the schedules of any broadcaster with pretensions of providing a Public Service. In due course, similar specialist Units were also established in London, in order to produce programmes on archaeology and history, on the arts, on music and on science. They too, at one time, had their successes. But they have not survived as well as the Unit in Bristol. The statutory requirement that a certain percentage of programmes must come from independent producers has reduced in-house production and the Units necessarily shrank proportionately in size. As they dwindled, so the critical mass of their production expertise has diminished. The continuity of their archives has been broken, they have lost the close touch they once had worldwide with their subjects and they are no longer regarded internationally as the centres of innovation and expertise that they once were.

When Birt gets up and says the whole of the BBC was a creative mess and it was wasteful, I never saw any evidence of that. I absolutely know it wasn’t so in my time. Producers now spend all their time worrying about money, and the thing has suffered for it.

In 2008, he criticised the BBC’s television schedules:

I have to say that there are moments when I wonder — moments when its two senior networks, first set up as a partnership, schedule simultaneously programmes of identical character, thereby contradicting the very reason that the BBC was given a second network. Then there are times when both BBC One and BBC Two, intoxicated by the sudden popularity of a programme genre, allow that genre to proliferate and run rampant through the schedules. The result is that other kinds of programmes are not placed, simply because of a lack of space. Do we really require so many gardening programmes, make-over programmes or celebrity chefs? Is it not a scandal in this day and age, that there seems to be no place for continuing series of programmes about science or serious music or thoughtful in-depth interviews with people other than politicians?

In 2009, Attenborough commented on the general state of British television, describing the newly introduced product placement on commercial television as something he considered an "appalling" idea 20 years earlier:

I think it's in great trouble. The whole system on which it was built — a limited number of networks, with adequate funding — is under threat. That funding is no longer there. As stations proliferate, so audiences are reduced. The struggle for audiences becomes ever greater, while money diminishes. I think that's a fair recipe for trouble. Inevitably, this has an impact on the BBC … Fortunately, the BBC doesn't think natural history programmes must compete with ''Strictly Come Dancing'' in terms of audience. The BBC says, 'Make proper, responsible natural history programmes.'

Other causes

In May 2005, Attenborough was appointed as patron of the UK's Blood Pressure Association, which provides information and support to people with hypertension.

Attenborough is also an honorary member of BSES Expeditions, a youth development charity that operates challenging scientific research expeditions to remote wilderness environments.

Parodies and artistic portrayals

Attenborough's accent and hushed, excited delivery have been the subject of frequent parodies by comedians, most notably Spike Milligan, Marty Feldman and ''The Goodies''. Attenborough is portrayed by Michael Palin in the final episode of ''Monty Python's Flying Circus'', where he searches the African jungle for the legendary Walking Tree of Dahomey (''Quercus Nicholas Parsonus''), sweating excessively and accompanied by native guides wearing saxophones. David Attenborough has also been parodied in a series of GEICO insurance commercials, showing a nature show host, clearly patterned on Attenborough.

"Time Flies", a sketch by David Ives, features a pair of anthropomorphic mayflies engaging in a courtship ritual, while watching themselves on television in a documentary narrated by David Attenborough.

The character of Nigel Thornberry, a nature documentarian on Nickelodeon's The Wild Thornberrys is strongly influenced by Attenborough.

He has also been parodied by the Australia 1980s sketch show The Comedy Company where Ian McFadyen portrays a character called David Rabbitborough.

The video game ''Discworld'', based on the series of books by Terry Pratchett, parodies his unique delivery to explain different aspects of the Discworld Universe, such as L-Space.

Mythbusters host Adam Savage often imitates Attenborough when speaking about his co-host Jamie Hyneman, which Jamie verified in the YouTube Special Episode.

Filmography

Attenborough is known foremost for writing and presenting the ten ''Life'' series, which are presented in chronological order below:

''Life on Earth'' (1979)

''The Living Planet'' (1984)

''The Trials of Life'' (1990)

''Life in the Freezer'' (1993)

''The Private Life of Plants'' (1995)

''The Life of Birds'' (1998)

''The Life of Mammals'' (2002)

''Life in the Undergrowth'' (2005)

''Life in Cold Blood'' (2008)

''First Life'' (2010)

His voice is synonymous with wildlife documentaries for British audiences, and the principal series with which his narration is associated include:

''Wildlife on One'' (1977–2005)

''BBC Wildlife Specials'' (1995–2008)

''The Blue Planet'' (2001)

''Planet Earth'' (British version) (2006)

''Nature's Great Events'' (2009)

''Life (2009)

''The Frozen Planet'' (2011) (in production)

Books

Bibliography

''Zoo Quest to Guyana'' (Lutterworth Press, 1956)

''Zoo Quest for a Dragon'' (Lutterworth Press, 1957)

* (book club edition with 85 extra pages, ''Quest for the Paradise Birds'', 1959)

''Zoo Quest in Paraguay'' (Lutterworth Press, 1959)

* paperback (Penguin Books, 1982)

''Quest in Paradise'' (1960)

''People of Paradise'' (Harper & Brothers, 1960)

''Zoo Quest to Madagascar'' (1961)

''Quest Under Capricorn'' (1963)

''Fabulous Animals'' (BBC, 1975) ISBN 0-563-17006-9

''The Tribal Eye'' (1976)

''Life on Earth'' (1979)

''Discovering Life on Earth'' (1981)

''Journeys to the past: Travels in New Guinea, Madagascar, and the northern territory of Australia'' (1983) Penguin Books ISBN 0-14-00.64133

''The Living Planet'' (1984)

''The First Eden: The Mediterranean World and Man'' (1987)(Little Brown & Co (T); 1st American ed edition (March 1990))

''The Atlas of the Living World'' (1989)

''The Trials of Life'' (Collins, 1990) ISBN 0-00-219912-2

''The Private Life of Plants'' (BBC Books, 1994) ISBN 0-563-37023-8

''The Life of Birds'' (BBC Books, 1998) ISBN 0-563-38792-0

''The Life of Mammals'' (BBC Books, 2002) ISBN 0-563-53423-0

''Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster'' (autobiography; 2002) ISBN 0-563-53461-3

* paperback: ISBN 0-563-48780-1

* updated edition: ISBN 9781846076527

''Life in the Undergrowth'' (BBC Books, 2005) ISBN 0-563-52208-9

''Amazing Rare Things - The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery'' with Susan Owens, Martin Clayton and Rea Alexandratos (The Royal Collection, 2007) Hardback - ISBN 978-1-902163-46-8; Softback - ISBN 978-1-902163-99-4

''Life in Cold Blood'' (BBC Books, 2007) ISBN 9780563539223

''Life Stories'', (HarperCollins Publishers, 2009) ISBN 9780007338832

''New Life Stories'', (Collins, 2011) ISBN 9780007425129

Introductions

Attenborough has written the introduction or foreword for a number of books, including:

''African Jigsaw: A Musical Entertainment'', Peter Rose and Anne Conlon (published: 1986, Weinberger)

''Tomorrow Is Too Late'', Various (The Macmillan Press, 1990)

''Life in the Freezer: Natural History of the Antarctic'', Alastair Fothergill (BBC Books, 1993), ISBN 0-563-36431-9

''Birds of Paradise: Paradisaeidae'' (Bird Families of the World series) Clifford B. Frith, Bruce M. Beehler, William T. Cooper (Illustrator) (Oxford University Press, 1998) ISBN 0-19-854853-2

''The Blue Planet'', Andrew Byatt, Alastair Fothergill, Martha Holmes (BBC Books, 2001) ISBN 0-563-38498-0.

''Light on the Earth'' (BBC Books, 2005), two decades of winning images from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, ISBN 0-563-52260-7

''Planet Earth'', Alastair Fothergill (BBC Books, 2006), ISBN 0-563-52212-7

Audio recordings

''Tarka the Otter'' by Henry Williamson (available on audiocassette, 1978)

''Yanomamo'' (musical entertainment, 1983) by Peter Rose and Anne Conlon; on-stage narration and published audio recording

''Ocean World'' (musical entertainment, 1990) by Peter Rose and Anne Conlon; on-stage narration (including at The Royal Festival Hall), for audio recording and video broadcast (both published)

''Peter and the Wolf'' for BBC Music Magazine (free CD with the June 2000 issue).

In addition, Attenborough has recorded some of his own works in audiobook form, including ''Life on Earth'', ''Zoo Quest for a Dragon'' and his autobiography ''Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster''.

References

External links

BBC Books David Attenborough website

BBC ''Life on Air'' website

BBC biography

Wildfilmhistory.org biography

BBC interviews with Attenborough in 1976 and 1998

PBS interview with Attenborough in 1998

A Life in TV: Sir David Attenborough, BAFTA

BBC Wildlife Finder - David Attenborough's favourite moments

Tribute from the World Land Trust

Category:1926 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge Category:Alumni of University College London Category:BBC Two controllers Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Category:Commanders of the Royal Victorian Order Category:English agnostics Category:English conservationists Category:English environmentalists Category:English television personalities Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:Fellows of the Royal Society Category:Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London Category:Fellows of the Zoological Society of London Category:Kalinga Prize recipients Category:Knights Bachelor Category:Members of the Linnean Society of London Category:Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour Category:Members of the Order of Merit Category:People associated with the University of Leicester Category:People from Leicester Category:People from London Category:Presenters of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures Category:British Book Award winners

ar:ديفيد آتينبارا bn:ডেভিড অ্যাটেনব্রো zh-min-nan:David Attenborough bg:Дейвид Атънбъро ca:David Attenborough cs:David Attenborough da:David Attenborough de:David Attenborough et:David Attenborough es:David Attenborough eo:David Attenborough fa:دیوید اتنبرو fr:David Attenborough ga:David Attenborough id:Sir David Attenborough it:David Attenborough he:דייוויד אטנבורו la:David Attenborough hu:David Attenborough nl:David Attenborough ja:デイビッド・アッテンボロー no:David Attenborough pnb:ڈیوڈ ایٹن برا pl:David Attenborough pt:David Attenborough ru:Аттенборо, Дэвид simple:David Attenborough szl:David Attenborough fi:David Attenborough sv:David Attenborough tl:David Attenborough ta:டேவிட் ஆட்டன்பரோ th:เดวิด แอทเทนเบอเรอห์ uk:Девід Аттенборо ur:ڈیوڈ ایٹن برا zh:戴維·阿滕伯勒

name	Sean Parker
education	Oakton High School, Chantilly High School
occupation	Internet technology businessman and entrepreneur
known for	Co-founded Plaxo, Causes and Napster. Early involvement with Facebook
networth	US$1.6 billion (2011) }}

Sean Parker (born 1979) is an American Internet technology businessman and entrepreneur. He co-founded Plaxo and Causes, and was a part of Facebook. He was also a co-founder or early employee of Napster.

Early life and education

His father began teaching him programming when he was 7 years old. At 16, he was sentenced to community service for hacking.

Parker attended Oakton High School in Fairfax County, Virginia for two years, before transferring to Chantilly High School in 1996 for his junior and senior years. He graduated in 1998.

Ventures

Napster

Sources are inconsistent as to whether he was a co-founder or early employee of Napster, a free file-sharing service for music that drew the ire of recording labels, the Recording Industry Association of America, and Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich. Lawsuits by various industry associations eventually shut down the service.

Plaxo

In November 2002, Parker subsequently launched Plaxo, an online address book and social networking service that integrated with Microsoft Outlook. He left Plaxo following unspecified disputes with two shareholders, Sequoia Capital and Ram Shriram.

Facebook

In 2004 Parker began informally advising the creators of Facebook and became its first president, receiving 7% of Facebook's stock when the company incorporated later that year. He was forced to leave Facebook in 2005 after being arrested on suspicion of cocaine possession. While on a kite boarding trip to North Carolina, Parker had signed the rental agreement on a beach-front vacation house where drugs were subsequently discovered by police who had come to the house with a search warrant following three nights of parties at the house. Prosecutors did not charge him due to lack of evidence. Facebook's biggest investor, Jim Breyer of Accel Partners, pushed for the ouster.

Spotify

In 2006 Parker joined the Founders Fund, a venture capital fund founded by Facebook investor Peter Thiel and based in San Francisco, as a managing partner.

In 2010 Parker sat on the Board of Directors for Spotify where the Founders Fund made a small investment bringing Spotify to the US in July 14, 2011. Parker later invested US$15 million in Spotify. Parker has said that Spotify is "the answer to piracy."

Other events

In June 2010 Parker was a participant at the Bilderberg conference in Sitges, Spain.

In popular culture

Parker's time with Facebook is depicted in the 2010 film ''The Social Network'', directed by David Fincher. He is portrayed by Justin Timberlake. Parker described the movie as "a complete work of fiction" and said that he wished his life "was that cool".

In 2010 Parker pledged $100,000 to the campaign to legalize marijuana in California, an effort spearheaded by Richard Lee, who was the guiding force behind California's Proposition 19. He was profiled in ''Vanity Fair'' in October 2010.

References

External links

Sean Parker Interview with David Kirkpatrick – September 2010 – publisher=World News.com

Category:1979 births Category:Living people Category:American businesspeople Category:Venture capitalists Category:People from Fairfax County, Virginia Category:Place of birth missing (living people) Category:Facebook employees Category:Silicon Valley people

bg:Шон Паркър de:Sean Parker es:Sean Parker fr:Sean Parker id:Sean Parker it:Sean Parker he:שון פארקר ja:ショーン・パーカー pl:Sean Parker pt:Sean Parker ru:Паркер, Шон sv:Sean Parker vi:Sean Parker zh:西恩·帕克

name	Ellie Goulding
background	solo_singer
birth name	Elena Jane Goulding
birth date	December 30, 1986
birth place	Hereford, Herefordshire, England
origin	London, England
genre	Indie pop, electropop, synthpop, folktronica
occupation	Singer-songwriter, guitarist, pianist, drummer
instrument	Vocals, guitar, drums, piano, clarinet, tambourine
years active	2007–present
label	Neon Gold, Polydor, Cherrytree, Interscope
associated acts	Starsmith, Diana Vickers, Gabriella Cilmi, Tinie Tempah, Erik Hassle, Lissie, Frankmusik, Lena Meyer-Landrut,Mumford & Sons
website	}}

Elena Jane "Ellie" Goulding (born December 30, 1986) is an English singer-songwriter. In 2010 she became only the second artist to both top the BBC's annual ''Sound of...'' poll, and win the Critics' Choice Award at the BRIT Awards in the same year, following Adele's win of both in 2008. After signing to Polydor Records in 2009, she released her first extended-play recording in 2009, ''An Introduction to Ellie Goulding'', and her debut studio album ''Lights'' followed in 2010. Her album went on to debut at number one on the UK Albums Chart and sold there over 380,000 copies by the end of 2010 and over 620,000 copies in total.

Her musical style has been compared to that of Kate Nash, Lykke Li, Tracey Thorn, and Björk.

Background

Ellie was born and brought up in Hereford, Herefordshire, the second of four children. She began playing the clarinet and writing songs at the age of nine, and at fourteen began learning guitar. She started songwriting at the age of fifteen and while in college she won a singing competition.

After commencing a drama course at the University of Kent, where she was exposed to electronic music, she developed her sound with the help of Frankmusik on the track "Wish I Stayed", and Starsmith, who went on to become her chief collaborator and primary producer of ''Lights''. After two years at Kent, she was advised to take a gap year to pursue singing, and moved to West London.

She is a keen runner, running six miles every day, and in 2010 admitted plans to run a marathon. In support of her second EP, ''Run Into the Light'', she invited a small number of fans through her Facebook pages, to run with her in seven different cities on her UK tour, and has announced that she will be doing the same across Europe and the United States. A website, EllieRuns.com, was launched in support. Goulding's keenness for exercise has given her what is considered to be an impressively athletic physique.

She is currently dating BBC Radio 1's DJ Greg James.

Music career

Early career

Signed to Polydor Records in September 2009, she made her debut single. "Under the Sheets", which was released digitally in the United Kingdom on 15 November 2009, peaking outside the top 40. In October 2009 she toured the UK supporting Little Boots, and appeared on ''Later... with Jools Holland'', performing "Under The Sheets" and "Guns and Horses". "Wish I Stayed" was available as a free download as the UK iTunes Store's 'Single of the Week' from 22–28 December 2009.

''Lights'' and ''Bright Lights''

Before the release of her debut studio album, Goulding won the BBC Sound of 2010 poll, which showcases the critics, broadcasters and music industry insiders' top choices for rising stars and artists for the coming year. She also won the Critics' Choice Award at the 2010 BRIT Awards, which prize made her the second artist to win both in the same year.

The album ''Lights'' was released in March 2010, reaching number one on the UK Albums Chart and number twelve on the Irish Albums Chart. Its singles, "Starry Eyed", "Guns and Horses", and "The Writer" peaked at numbers 4, 26, and 19 respectively. In August 2010, Ellie released a second extended play, ''Run Into the Light'', a remixed version of ''Lights''. The album was supported by Nike and was released through Polydor as a running soundtrack in an effort to get Goulding's music taken up by the national running subculture.

In November 2010, ''Lights'' was re-released as ''Bright Lights'', with six new tracks added. It was originally announced that the lead single from ''Bright Lights'' would be the new edit of the title track with a release scheduled for 1 November 2010. Yet this was scrapped to allow her cover of Elton John's "Your Song" to be released in conjunction with the John Lewis Christmas 2010 advertising campaign in the UK. The single became Goulding's highest-charting single to date, reaching number two on the UK Singles Chart. The song also charted in some European countries in early 2011.

Goulding toured in support of ''Lights'' and supported Passion Pit in March 2010 and John Mayer during his British tour in May 2010. During the summer she performed at a number of festivals. On 29 May she performed at the Dot to Dot Festival in Bristol. She performed a set on 25 June at the 40th annual Glastonbury Festival on the John Peel Stage. Her third EP was a live recording of part of her set at the iTunes Festival 2010. The whole set was later released as part of the iTunes version of ''Bright Lights''. She made her T in the Park debut on 11 July. She played on the Nissan Juke Arena at the 2010 V Festival in late August. In September she was part of the line-up at Bestival 2010 on the Isle of Wight. In support of the album in Europe she performed on the first day of Pukkelpop in Belgium, at the Open'er Festival in Poland and at Benicàssim in Spain. A track from ''Lights'', "Everytime You Go", was featured in the ''Vampire Diaries'' episode "Founder's Day", while "Your Biggest Mistake" appeared in an episode of ''The Inbetweeners''. She began a tour of the United States and Canada in February 2011 to coincide with the release of the American edition of ''Lights''. She will also play at Coachella.

In January 2011 it was announced that the title track from ''Lights'' would serve as the second single from ''Bright Lights''. In early 2011 she recorded an original song for the film ''Life in a Day''. Goulding was featured as number five artist on Rolling Stone Magazine's hotlist in February 2011. In February 2011 she returned to the BRIT Awards where she was nominated for the Best British Female Solo Artist and the Best British Breakthrough Act. Previously she had performed at the BRITs launch party where the nominations were announced. Goulding will headline the 2011 Wakestock Festival in Wales, performing on 8 July. In August she will again perform at the V Festival. Following the re-release of ''Lights'' and the American launch of the album, Goulding said she would soon begin work on a second studio album with an expected release in September 2011. Goulding made her American television debut on ''Jimmy Kimmel Live'' on 7 April 2011 performing "Starry Eyed". She appeared as the musical guest on the 700th episode of the ''Saturday Night Live'', broadcast 7 May 2011 and hosted by Tina Fey. She served as the only live performer at the wedding reception of Prince William and Kate Middleton on 29 April 2011 singing her rendition of Your Song for the couple's first dance as well as her hits The Writer and Starry Eyed and several of William and Kate's personal favourites. She was introduced to Prince William by Tinie Tempah at a music festival during the summer of 2010. Ellie performed, for the second consecutive year, at Radio 1's Big Weekend on Saturday 14 May. On 28 July 2011, the American video version of Starry Eyed was released on Youtube. The video reached over 1 million views in just 3 days. The video features Ellie wearing blue contacts

Untitled second album

In March 2011, Goulding told UK showbiz website Digital Spy that she is recording a currently untitled follow-up to ''Lights''. When asked about the musical direction of the record, Ellie told the site:

The previous month, the site reported that she hopes to release the album at some point in 2011, saying, "I'm not going to go away for ages. It'll be out this year or the start of next."

Work with other artists

Goulding co-wrote "Love Me 'Cause You Want To" for Gabriella Cilmi's second album, ''Ten'', and three songs, "Remake Me + You", "Notice" and "Jumping Into Rivers," for Diana Vickers's debut album, ''Songs from the Tainted Cherry Tree''. Her song "Not Following" was used by Lena Meyer-Landrut on her debut album ''My Cassette Player''. Goulding featured on the rapper Tinie Tempah's fifth official single "Wonderman" from his debut studio album Disc-Overy. Goulding is also featured on American rap duo Chiddy Bang's song "Under the Sheets" on their mixtape ''Airswell''. Frankmusik told Digital Spy he hoped to collaborate with Goulding on his upcoming album. The two previously worked together on Ellie's track ''Wish I Stayed''.

Discography

;Studio albums

2010: ''Lights'' / ''Bright Lights''

2011: TBA

;Extended plays

2009: ''An Introduction to Ellie Goulding''

2010: ''iTunes Festival: London 2010''

2010: ''Run Into the Light''

Awards and nominations

Year	Organization	Nominated Work	Award	Result
			Sound of 2010
2010 BRIT Awards	Critics' Choice
rowspan="2"	Best Female Artist
Best Breakthrough Artist
	Best UK & Ireland Act
2010 MP3 Music Awards	The BNC Award
	Best Female Artist
	Best Breakthrough Artist
rowspan="2"	Best Newcomer
Lights	Best Album
			British Female Solo Artist
British Breakthrough Act
rowspan="2"		Pandora Newcomer of the Year 2011

References

External links

Category:1986 births Category:Alumni of the University of Kent Category:BRIT Award winners Category:English electronic musicians Category:English female guitarists Category:English female singers Category:English pop guitarists Category:English pop pianists Category:English pop singers Category:English singer-songwriters Category:English vegetarians Category:English-language singers Category:Folktronica Category:Indie pop musicians Category:Living people Category:People from Hereford Category:Polydor Records artists Category:Synthpop musicians

bg:Ели Голдинг cs:Ellie Goulding da:Ellie Goulding de:Ellie Goulding es:Ellie Goulding fr:Ellie Goulding id:Ellie Goulding it:Ellie Goulding hu:Ellie Goulding nl:Ellie Goulding pcd:Ellie Goulding pl:Ellie Goulding pt:Ellie Goulding ro:Ellie Goulding ru:Голдинг, Элли fi:Ellie Goulding sv:Ellie Goulding tr:Ellie Goulding zh:愛莉格