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Steven Hopper at Kew Gardens
Year of production - 2009
Duration - 1min 18sec
Tags - environment, evidence, see all tags
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Steven Hopper at Kew Gardens is an excerpt from the television documentary series, Darwin’s Brave New World, produced in 2009.
Darwin’s Brave New World
A 3 × 1 hour drama-documentary series about how the Southern Hemisphere gave birth to the most controversial idea in science: evolution by means of natural selection. Interweaving dramatic reconstruction with documentary actuality and moving between the 19th century and the 21st, this series is the story of how Charles Darwin’s ‘dangerous idea’ developed during his epic voyage through South America, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands and how that idea forever transformed society and science. Darwin’s Brave New World is a Film Australia, Beckers Group, Ferns Productions co-production.
Steven Hopper is Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (UK) one of the leading botanical centres in the world.
At the age of 22 Charles Darwin seemed destined to become a clergyman when in 1831 he was given an opportunity to sail to South America on the small survey vessel HMS Beagle. The five year voyage exposed the young Darwin to the stunning nature of the world, triggering ideas that would come to explain the origin of life on earth and shake society to its core. The Beagle voyage proved the seminal event in Charles Darwin’s career, setting him on a path to become the most famous naturalist of the modern era.
Following up a ‘big idea’
Research to find out how people reacted to Darwin’s ideas, and how they changed the way many people thought about the origins of the world.
Nora Barlow (ed), The autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882, New York, WW Norton & Company, 2005
Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, London. Penguin, 1989
F.W. Nicholas and J.M. Nicholas, Charles Darwin in Australia, Port Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 2002
Iain McCalman & Nigel Erskine (eds), In the wake of the Beagle: science in the southern oceans from the age of Darwin, Sydney, UNSW Press, 2009
Iain McCalman, Darwin’s armada: how four voyagers to Australasia won the battle for evolution and changed the world, Sydney, Viking, 2009
David Quammen (ed), Charles Darwin: On the origin of species, illustrated edition, New York, Sterling, 2008
Julie Simpkin (ed), Charles Darwin: An Australian Selection, Canberra, National Museum of Australia Press, 2008
The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online
Natural History Museum – Darwin200