The BBC Darwin Season is a series of television and radio programmes commissioned by the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

in 2009 to celebrate the

bicentenary __NOTOC__ A bicentennial or bicentenary is the two-hundredth anniversary of a part, or the celebrations thereof. It may refer to: Europe *French Revolution bicentennial, commemorating the 200th anniversary of 14 July 1789 uprising, celebrated i ...

of the great naturalist

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...

(1809-1882) and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his revolutionary book,

On the Origin of Species ''On the Origin of Species'' (or, more completely, ''On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life''),The book's full original title was ''On the Origin of Species by Me ...

in November, 1859. In partnership with the

Open University The Open University (OU) is a British Public university, public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by List of universities in the United Kingdom by enrolment, number of students. The majority of the OU's underg ...

, the BBC produced a special documentary, Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life, narrated by

David Attenborough Sir David Frederick Attenborough (; born 8 May 1926) is an English broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and author. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural histor ...

, and three major series.BBC Press Pack: The BBC's Darwin Season: marking the life and work of Charles Darwin – introduction
/ref> Other presenters involved are

Andrew Marr Andrew William Stevenson Marr (born 31 July 1959) is a British journalist and broadcaster. Beginning his career as a political commentator, he subsequently edited '' The Independent'' newspaper from 1996 to 1998 and was political editor of BBC ...

Melvyn Bragg Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg, (born 6 October 1939), is an English broadcaster, author and parliamentarian. He is best known for his work with ITV as editor and presenter of '' The South Bank Show'' (1978–2010), and for the BBC Radio 4 documen ...

and

Jimmy Doherty Jimmy Doherty (born 24 May 1975) is an English television presenter and farmer. A childhood friend of Jamie Oliver, Doherty is known for the show '' Jimmy's Farm'', detailing the operation of the Essex Pig Company that he and his wife Michael ...

. The overall

commissioning editor In book publishing, a commissioning editor is essentially a buyer. It is the job of the commissioning editor to advise the publishing house on which books to publish. Usually the actual decision of whether to contract a book is taken by a senior m ...

for the season is Martin Davidson, the BBC's commissioning editor for specialist factual (in-house).BBC unveils line-up for Darwin season

Broadcast Broadcasting is the distribution (business), distribution of sound, audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic medium (communication), mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio ...

, 3 July 2008 Contributing units of the BBC are BBC Science, the Natural History Unit, the Religion and Ethics department and the children's channel,

CBBC CBBC (initialised as Children's BBC and also known as the CBBC Channel) is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast children's television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is also the bran ...

Highlights

Radio

Events in the Darwin season are broadcast on the broadcaster's flagship voice programming channel, Radio 4 and its arts and culture channel, Radio 3. : ''Radio 4'' *

presents ''Darwin: In Our Time'', a four-part documentary series examining "Darwin's writing remains such a profound influence on our understanding of the natural world." * In ''Dear Darwin'', five eminent contemporary thinkers present spoken letters to Charles Darwin "expressing their thoughts on his legacy.Dear Darwin

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of Talk radio, spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history fro ...

Craig Venter John Craig Venter (born October 14, 1946) is an American biotechnologist and businessman. He is known for leading one of the first draft sequences of the human genome and assembled the first team to transfect a cell with a synthetic chromosome. ...

, founder of

The Institute for Genomic Research The J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) is a non-profit genomics research institute founded by J. Craig Venter, Ph.D. in October 2006. The institute was the result of consolidating four organizations: the Center for the Advancement of G ...

Jonathan Miller Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE (21 July 1934 – 27 November 2019) was an English theatre and opera director, actor, author, television presenter, humourist and physician. After training in medicine and specialising in neurology in the late 1 ...

, theatre director, author and broadcaster **

Jerry Coyne Jerry may refer to: Animals * Jerry (Grand National winner), racehorse, winner of the 1840 Grand National * Jerry (St Leger winner), racehorse, winner of 1824 St Leger Stakes Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Jerry'' (film), a 2006 Indian fil ...

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

professor of biology, writer ** Peter Bentley, researcher in

evolutionary computation In computer science, evolutionary computation is a family of algorithms for global optimization inspired by biological evolution, and the subfield of artificial intelligence and soft computing studying these algorithms. In technical terms, ...

and

biologically inspired computing Bio-inspired computing, short for biologically inspired computing, is a field of study which seeks to solve computer science problems using models of biology. It relates to connectionism, social behavior, and emergence. Within computer science ...

Baruch Blumberg Baruch Samuel Blumberg (July 28, 1925 April 5, 2011), known as Barry Blumberg, was an American physician, geneticist, and co-recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (with Daniel Carleton Gajdusek), for his work on the h ...

, recipient of the 1976

Nobel Prize in Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine ( sv, Nobelpriset i fysiologi eller medicin) is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute, Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or ...

. Blumberg identified the

Hepatitis B Hepatitis B is an infectious disease caused by the '' Hepatitis B virus'' (HBV) that affects the liver; it is a type of viral hepatitis. It can cause both acute and chronic infection. Many people have no symptoms during an initial infection. F ...

virus A virus is a wikt:submicroscopic, submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living Cell (biology), cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and ...

, and later developed the diagnostic test and

vaccine A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious or malignant disease. The safety and effectiveness of vaccines has been widely studied and verified. ...

for it. * Maritime historian

Robert Prescott General Robert Prescott (21December 1815) was a British military officer and colonial administrator. During a military career which spanned over fifty years, he participated in the Seven Years' War, the French and Indian War, and the American ...

seeks the final resting place of Darwin's ship in ''Hunting The Beagle''Hunting the Beagle

* Poet and journalist

Ruth Padel Ruth Sophia Padel FRSL FZS is a British poet, novelist and non-fiction author, known for her poetic explorations of migration, both animal and human, and her involvement with classical music, wildlife conservation and Greece, ancient and modern. ...

, a descendant of Charles Darwin, " xploresthe ideas and emotions which shaped Darwin" in a four-part series, ''Darwin: My Ancestor''Darwin: My Ancestor

: ''Radio 3'' * In ''The Origins Of The Origin'', Andrew Cunningham explores the intellectual context in which Darwin presented his work, particularly the precursors who presented earlier evolutionary theories.BBC Press Pack part 2
21 January 2009 * Rev

Angela Tilby use both this parameter and , birth_date to display the person's date of birth, date of death, and age at death) --> , death_place = , death_cause = , other_names = , years_active = , occupation = , education ...

discusses Darwin's religious views in ''Darwin's Conundrum'' * ''The Essay: Darwin's Children'' is a series of essays in which representatives of five professions examine the impact of evolutionary theory on their field. **

Jonathan Gottschall Jonathan Gottschall (born September 20, 1972) is an American literary scholar specializing in literature and evolution. He holds the title of Research Fellow in the English department of Washington & Jefferson College in Pennsylvania. He is the ...

, literary darwinist: literary interpretation **

Judith Donath Judith Stefania Donath (born May 7, 1962) is a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center, and the founder of the ''Sociable Media Group'' at the MIT Media Lab. She has written papers on various aspects of the Internet and its social impact, such as Int ...

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...

: online social networks such as

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

Douglas Davies Douglas James Davies, (born 11 February 1947) is a Welsh Anglican theologian, anthropologist, and academic, specialising in the history, theology, and sociology of death. He is Professor in the Study of Religion at the University of Durham. ...

theologian Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing th ...

, anthropologist:

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...

** Diana Donald, art historian: art and aesthetic theory ** James K Galbraith: economics Darwin is also the subject of special editions of the programmes ''

Night Waves ''Free Thinking'' is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 3 as part of their "After Dark" late night programming. The programme is a rebranded version of ''Night Waves'', "Radio 3's flagship arts and ideas programme". ''Night Waves'' was b ...

'' and ''Words and Music''.

Television

* On

BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's Flagship (broadcasting), flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News ...

: ** " Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life", an introduction to Darwin's life and his theory of evolution, presented by

. ** ''

Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for Cell growth, growth, reaction to Stimu ...

'', a ten-part

nature documentary A nature documentary or wildlife documentary is a genre of documentary film or series about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures, usually concentrating on video taken in their natural habitat but also often including footage of t ...

series produced by the

BBC Natural History Unit The BBC Studios Natural History Unit (NHU) is a department of BBC Studios that produces television, radio and online content with a natural history or wildlife theme. It is best known for its highly regarded nature documentaries, including '' ...

and narrated by Attenborough. * On

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream ...

: ** ''Darwin's Dangerous Idea'' a three-part series presented by

showing how the theory of evolution has influenced politics and society in the last 150 years. ** ''Jimmy Doherty in Darwin's Garden'', a three-part series based in which the presenter recreates some of Darwin's experiments at

Down House Down House is the former home of the English naturalist Charles Darwin and his family. It was in this house and garden that Darwin worked on his theory of evolution by natural selection, which he had conceived in London before moving to Down ...

. ** ''Did Darwin Kill God?'', in which philosopher and theologian Conor Cunningham of Nottingham University discusses the history of Christian attitudes to

Biblical literalism Biblical literalism or biblicism is a term used differently by different authors concerning biblical interpretation. It can equate to the dictionary definition of literalism: "adherence to the exact letter or the literal sense", where literal mea ...

, arguing that it is legitimate to accept Darwin's theory of evolution and believe in God. * On

BBC Four BBC Four is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002

: ** ''

What Darwin Didn't Know ''What Darwin Didn't Know'' is a documentary show on BBC Four presented by Armand Marie Leroi which charts the progress in the field of Evolutionary Theory since the original publication of Charles Darwin's '' On the Origin of Species'' in 18 ...

'', a 90-minute examination of what we have learned since Darwin, presented by

Armand Leroi Armand Marie Leroi (born 16 July 1964) is a New Zealand-born Dutch author, broadcaster, and professor of evolutionary developmental biology at Imperial College in London. He received the Guardian First Book Award in 2004 for his book ''Mutants ...

. ** ''Darwin's Struggle: The Evolution Of The Origin Of Species'', a 60-minute documentary featuring biographers and scientists examining, through Darwin's own private writings, the internal struggle which Darwin went through during the twenty years he took to develop his ideas into a revolutionary book.

References

External links

BBC Darwin Season
website * * * * * {{IMDb title, 1640682, Darwin's Struggle: The Evolution of the Origin of Species Charles Darwin bicentenary BBC Television BBC Radio Educational broadcasting in the United Kingdom Documentary television shows about evolution