
28 May 2002

A Brilliant Madness
The life of the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician and schizophrenic John Nash — the inspiration for the feature film A Beautiful Mind — is a powerful exploration of how genius and madness can become intertwined.

A BBC documentary uncovers, for the first time, the original manuscript where Newton forecast the date of the end of the world. Newton, the father of modern mathematics, dedicated a large part of his life to a quest to decode the Bible which he believed to be the word of God. For over 50 years, he studied the Bible trying to unravel God's secret laws of the Universe. He was fanatical in his quest to discover the date for the Second Coming of Christ and the end of the world. Scholars have spent years trying to unravel Newton's writings on the Book of Revelation to establish when he thought the apocalypse was coming.

Sir William James
Royal Society Speaker

28 May 2002

The life of the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician and schizophrenic John Nash — the inspiration for the feature film A Beautiful Mind — is a powerful exploration of how genius and madness can become intertwined.

01 Jan 2010

Until recently geometry was 'cold', incapable of describing the irregular shape of a cloud, the slope of a mountain or the beauty of the human body. With fractal geometry, Benoit Mandelbrot gave us a language for our natural world. In this captivating documentary, the man himself explains this groundbreaking discovery.

01 Sep 2015

Narrated by Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons, The Genius of George Boole assembles academics and industry leaders from across the globe to explore the life and importance of one of the world’s greatest unsung heroes.

17 Jul 2018

Our two-hour film highlights the life and career of Dr. Schreiber with respect and clarity. Raemer, his wife Marge, and young daughter Paula would move to the high-desert of New Mexico where he and other brilliant minds would change the world forever.

08 Feb 2019

The first American space station Skylab is found in pieces scattered in Western Australia. Putting these pieces back together and re-tracing the Skylab program back to its very conception reveals the cornerstone of human space exploration.

19 Nov 2011

As a young missionary, Richard Wilhelm in 1899 to China, which was then exploited by the colonial powers. He lived there revolts against foreigners, the end of the imperial dynasties and the First World War. In these times of turbulent upheavals he was indefatigable in search of the deepest truth that helps people deal with change and able to shape their own lives. Richard Wilhelm baptized not only Chinese, but accomplished one of the largest translation services of the 20th century: Confucius, LAOTSE the most important texts of Daoism and especially the I CHING THE BOOK OF CHANGES. The book also served many readers in the West as inspiration. Wilhelm is still one of the most important mediators of Chinese culture in Europe.

24 Mar 2009

Twenty years after A Brief History of Time flummoxed the world with its big numbers and black holes, its author, Stephen Hawking, concedes that the "ultimate theory" he'd believed to be imminent - which would conclusively explain the origins of life, the universe and everything - remains frustratingly elusive. Yet despite his failing health and the seeming impossibility of the task, Hawking is still devoted to his work; an extraordinary drive that's captured here in fleeting interview snippets and footage of the scientist sharing a microwave dinner with some fawning PhD students. Though the pop-science tutorials that dapple the first of this two-part biography are winningly perky, Hawking, alas, remains as tricky to fathom as his boggling quantum whatnots
24 Apr 2007
Documentary examining the medieval myth of the Philosopher's Stone, a Holy Grail-type relic which supposedly held the key to alchemy and immortality. Many noted alchemists and adventurers searched obsessively for the artifact hoping to learn its powerful secrets, a quest which allegedly drove some to madness and others to celestial encounters.

11 Nov 2005

Her opponents gave her the “Bullshit Award” for sustaining global poverty. Time Magazine hailed her as one of the great heroes of our time – an icon for young people all over the world. She is Vandana Shiva and this is a film about globalization, genetic engineering, bio-piracy, and indigenous knowledge.

09 Aug 2012

On January 28, 1986, NASA Challenger mission STS-51-L ended in tragedy when the shuttle exploded 73 seconds after takeoff. On board was physicist Ronald E. McNair, the second African American to enter space. But first, he was a kid with big dreams in Lake City, South Carolina.

17 Sep 2022

At the edge of our solar system supposedly lies an immense planet. Five to ten times the size of the Earth. Several international teams of scientists have been competing in a frantic race to detect it, in uncharted territories, far beyond Neptune. The recent discovery of several dwarf planets, with intriguing trajectories, have put astronomers on the trail of this mysterious planet. Why is this enigmatic planet so difficult to detect? What would a ninth planet teach us about our corner of the universe? Could it help us unlock some of the mysteries of our solar system?

24 Jul 2021

Part of the Almost Famous series. Jocelyn Bell was a graduate student at Cambridge in 1967 when she pushed through the skepticism from her superiors to make one of the greatest astrophysical discoveries of the twentieth century. While Jocelyn was belittled and sexually harassed by the media, the Nobel Prize was awarded to her professor and his boss.

29 Sep 2017

An incredible travel through space and time between the walls of the Paris Observatory, which is celebrating its 350th birthday. Place of discoveries such as speed of light or Neptune’s existence, it is still today one of the oldest operating observatories and the greatest hub in the world for astronomy and astrophysics researches, second only to Harvard.

19 Apr 2020

For thirty years, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered new alien worlds, black holes, and the age of the universe itself; NASA astronauts reveal the secret history of the life-or-death missions to keep this complex machine working.
14 Mar 2013
A documentary about the life and work of seminal mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan.

15 Feb 2017

The year 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of one on the most important events in Western civilization: the birth of an idea that continues to shape the life of every American today. In 1517, power was in the hands of the few, thought was controlled by the chosen, and common people lived lives without hope. On October 31 of that year, a penniless monk named Martin Luther sparked the revolution that would change everything. He had no army. In fact, he preached nonviolence so powerfully that — 400 years later — Michael King would change his name to Martin Luther King to show solidarity with the original movement. This movement, the Protestant Reformation, changed Western culture at its core, sparking the drive toward individualism, freedom of religion, women's rights, separation of church and state, and even free public education. Without the Reformation, there would have been no pilgrims, no Puritans, and no America in the way we know it.

01 Jan 2006

A story about the life and turbulent times of Lisa Meitner and Otto Hahn, two exceptional scientists whose remarkable collaboration culminated in the discovery of nuclear fission, the division of the atom that changed the future. The show traces the development of nuclear science in the first half of the twentieth century, Meitner's early struggle for education and her quest to gain a foothold in the world of male-dominated physics, Hahn's initial research and independent discoveries, the collaborative discovery of the two scientists, as co-discoverers and the award of the Nobel Prize only to Hahn.

20 Apr 2018

Europe and the United States are working together on an unprecedented journey to learn more about the impact of the Sun on our planet, to really know what its atmosphere is like and how it affects our environment; since solar radiation increasingly affects our lives and telecommunications.
28 May 1994
A documentary charting the rigors of the Russian space program, where the symbol of national pride would justify the most demanding training conditions.

27 Oct 2010

In Chile's Atacama Desert, astronomers peer deep into the cosmos in search for answers concerning the origins of life. Nearby, a group of women sift through the sand searching for body parts of loved ones, dumped unceremoniously by Pinochet's regime.