David Attenborough | Origin of Life IV

Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones and other natural specimens. He received encouragement in this pursuit at age seven, when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his "museum." A few years later, one of his adoptive sisters gave him a piece of amber filled with prehistoric creatures; some 50 years later, it would be the focus of his programme The Amber Time Machine.

Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and then won a scholarship to Clare College of Cambridge University in 1945, where he studied geology and zoology and obtained a degree in natural sciences. In 1947 he was called up for national service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth.