About this season
Beautiful Minds is a BBC documentary series shown on BBC Four, which features significant British scientists who describe their big moment or discovery. The first series aired in April 2010, and the second series in April 2012. Each series consists of three episodes
Episodes (3)
1. Professor Jenny Clack
Aired 11 April 2012 • 60 min
For palaeontologist Professor Jenny Clack, who solved one of the greatest mysteries in the history of life on Earth, success was far from inevitable. She recounts how she had to overcome a series of setbacks before she found and described the fossil Acanthostega, a 365 million-year-old creature that offered dramatic new evidence of how fish made the transition onto land.
2. Professor Andre Geim
Aired 18 April 2012 • 60 min
Andre Geim reveals how his playful approach to research helped him uncover the properties of graphene, the world's thinnest material, and won him a Nobel Prize.
3. Professor Richard Dawkins
Aired 25 April 2012 • 60 min
Professor Richard Dawkins reveals how he came to write his explosive first book The Selfish Gene, a work that was to divide the scientific community and make him the most influential evolutionary biologist of his generation. He also explores how this set him on the path to becoming an outspoken spokesman for atheism.