Genius of Britain facts for kids

Genius of Britain: The Scientists Who Changed the World is a five-part 2010 television documentary presented by leading British scientific figures, which charts the history of some of Britain's most important scientists and innovators.

Presenters

Main Host

• Stephen Hawking – Theoretical Physicist, Cosmologist

Segment Presenters

• Jim Al-Khalili – Theoretical physicist
• David Attenborough – Broadcaster, Naturalist
• Richard Dawkins – Evolutionary biologist
• James Dyson – Industrial designer
• Olivia Judson – Evolutionary biologist
• Paul Nurse – Geneticist
• Kathy Sykes – Physicist
• Robert Winston – Medical doctor, Scientist

Segments

Episode 1: The First Five
	Subject: Wren Christopher Wren	Presenter: Attenborough David Attenborough
	An English natural philosopher, anatomist and astronomer, as well as a pioneering architect, who as founding president of the Royal Society pioneered practical experimentation and secured the society's royal patronage.
	Subject: Hooke Robert Hooke	Presenter: Dawkins Richard Dawkins
	An English natural philosopher, instrument maker, astronomer and pioneering microbiologist, who was curator of experiments for the Royal Society and the first to illustrate insects as seen through a microscope.
	Subject: Boyle Robert Boyle	Presenter: Dyson James Dyson
	An Anglo-Irish natural philosopher and pioneering chemist, who with the assistance Robert Hooke developed the air pump to discover the properties of air and its importance to life, which he demonstrated to the Royal Society.
	Subject: Newton Isaac Newton	Presenter: Al-Khalili Jim Al-Khalili
	An English natural philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and alchemist, whose contributions to optics, universal gravitation and laws of motion resulted in his knighthood and presidency of the Royal Society.
	Subject: Halley Edmond Halley	Presenter: Sykes Kathy Sykes
	An English natural philosopher, astronomer and mathematician, whose mapping of the stars of the southern hemisphere resulted in his appointment to the Royal Society and as the second Astronomer Royal.

Episode 2: A Roomful of Brilliant Minds
	Subject: Banks Joseph Banks	Presenter: Attenborough David Attenborough
	A British naturalist and botanist who assembled a large collection of exotic biological specimens while sailing with James Cook on his first voyage and became a long-serving director of Kew Gardens and president of the Royal Society.
	Subject: Watt James Watt	Presenter: Dyson James Dyson
	A Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose development the Watt steam engine, while repairing a Newcomen steam engine, drove the Industrial Revolution first in Britain and then in the rest of the world.
	Subject: Hunter John Hunter	Presenter: Winston Robert Winston
	A Scottish surgeon and anatomist who collected specimens, preserved at the Hunterian Museum, and made accurate maps of the body and how the parts interact and function, which brought surgery out of the Middle Ages and put it on a scientific basis.
	Subject: Jenner Edward Jenner	Presenter: Dawkins Richard Dawkins
	An English physician, scientist and pioneering immunologist, trained by John Hunter, who deliberately infected a boy first with cowpox and then with smallpox in a pioneering experiment which led to the development of the world's first vaccine.
	Subject: Cavendish Henry Cavendish	Presenter: Al-Khalili Jim Al-Khalili
	A British natural philosopher and chemist who discovered and investigated the properties of hydrogen, which he called inflammable air, paving the way for hydrogen balloons and bombs, and working with Joseph Priestley discovered the composition of water.
	Subject: Priestley Joseph Priestley	Presenter: Al-Khalili Jim Al-Khalili
	An English natural philosopher, theologian and chemist who investigated the properties of air, inventing soda water and discovering oxygen in the process, and working with Henry Cavendish discovered the composition of water.

Episode 3: The Lights Come On
	Subject: Faraday Michael Faraday	Presenter: Dyson James Dyson
	A British scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis.
	Subject: Wallace Alfred Russel Wallace	Presenter: Dawkins Richard Dawkins
	A British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection; his paper on the subject was jointly published with some of Charles Darwin's writings in 1858.
	Subject: Thomson William Thomson	Presenter: Sykes Kathy Sykes
	A British a mathematical physicist and engineer who did important work in the mathematical analysis of electricity and formulation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and unifying the emerging discipline of physics in its modern form.
	Subject: Brunel Isambard Kingdom Brunel	Presenter: Dyson James Dyson
	A British mechanical and civil engineer who was the designer of the Great Western Railway, Clifton Suspension Bridge, SS Great Britain and numerous significant ships, tunnels and bridges. He revolutionised public transport and modern engineering.
	Subject: Maxwell James Clerk Maxwell	Presenter: Al-Khalili Jim Al-Khalili
	A British mathematical physicist who formulated the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, bringing together for the first time electricity, magnetism, and light as manifestations of the same phenomenon.

Episode 4: Out of the Darkness
	Subject: Watson Robert Watson-Watt	Presenter: Al-Khalili Jim Al-Khalili
	A British pioneer of radar technology who demonstrated the first practical radio system for detecting aircraft when he successfully bounced a radio wave from a BBC short-wave transmitter off a Handley Page Heyford aircraft.
	Subject: Turing Alan Turing	Presenter: Dawkins Richard Dawkins
	A British computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and theoretical biologist who formalised the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which is a model of a general purpose computer.
	Subject: Whittle Frank Whittle	Presenter: Dyson James Dyson
	A British Royal Air Force (RAF) engineer air officer. He is credited with single-handedly inventing the turbojet engine. Whittle's jet engines were developed some years earlier than those of Germany's Hans von Ohain who was the designer of the first operational turbojet engine.
	Subject: Fleming Alexander Fleming	Presenter: Nurse Paul Nurse
	A British biologist, pharmacologist and botanist who discovered the world's first antibiotic substance benzylpenicillin (Penicillin G) from the mould Penicillium notatum, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
	Subject: Dirac Paul Dirac	Presenter: Sykes Kathy Sykes
	A British theoretical physicist who made fundamental contributions to the early development of both quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. He formulated the Dirac equation which describes the behaviour of fermions and predicted the existence of antimatter.

Episode 5: Asking Big Questions
	Subject: Crick Francis Crick	Presenter: Dawkins Richard Dawkins
	A British molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, most noted for being a co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953 with James Watson. Together with Watson and Maurice Wilkins, he was jointly awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
	Subject: Watson James D. Watson	Presenter: Dawkins Richard Dawkins
	An American molecular biologist, geneticist and zoologist, best known as one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA in 1953 with Francis Crick and Rosalind Franklin.
–	Subject: Franklin Rosalind Franklin	Presenter: Judson Olivia Judson
	A British chemist and X-ray crystallographer who made contributions to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, coal, and graphite.
	Subject: Wilkins Maurice Wilkins	Presenter: Judson Olivia Judson
	A New Zealand-born British physicist and molecular biologist, who is best known for his work at King's College London on the structure of DNA, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Crick and Watson.
	Subject: Hoyle Fred Hoyle	Presenter: Al-Khalili Jim Al-Khalili
	A British astronomer noted primarily for the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis, but also for his often controversial stances on other scientific matters—in particular his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory, a term coined by him on BBC radio, and his promotion of panspermia as the origin of life on Earth.
	Subject: Hawking Stephen Hawking	Presenter: Al-Khalili Jim Al-Khalili
	A British theoretical physicist and cosmologist whose scientific work includes the Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems, the prediction that black holes emit radiation, and a theory of cosmology unifying the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.
–	Subject: Hamilton Bill Hamilton	Presenter: Dawkins Richard Dawkins
	A British evolutionary biologist, whose theoretical work expounding a rigorous genetic basis for the existence of altruism provided an insight that was a key part of the development of a gene-centric view of evolution.
	Subject: Carbon Nanotubes	Presenter: Dyson James Dyson
	Cylindrical carbon molecules, which are valuable for nanotechnology, electronics, optics and other fields of materials science, including being able to meet the specific strength requirements for a space elevator.