BBC - Beautiful Minds Series 2 (2012) Part 1 Professor Jenny Clack

Who are the modern men and women who will be remembered for the brilliance of their minds? What are your legacy and what you can to tell us his extraordinary discoveries about the nature of science and the nature of truth? Great minds don't think alike. In fact, the offbeat and complex thinking of a handful of pioneers has led to some of the greatest scientific discoveries of our age. In Beautiful Minds three of Britain's most influential and respected scientists explain how their unique scientific perspectives have redefined how we think about the world around us. Series 2 assembles palaeontologist Jenny Clack, physicist Andre Geim and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkinsto give their unique perspectives on life, the Universe and everything inbetween. They explain what drives this extraordinary passion for science, the inspiration behind the moment of insight, and the possible far-reaching consequences of their discoveries.

Part 1 Professor Jenny Clack

Jenny Clack recounts how she overcame setbacks before she found and described a fossil which offered new evidence of how fish made the transition onto land. For palaeontologist Professor Jenny Clack, who solved one of the greatest mysteries in the history of life on Earth, success was far from inevitable. A chance discovery in 1986 in the earth sciences department of Cambridge University, of long-forgotten fossils collected from the Devonian rocks of East Greenland in 1970, was to shape the rest of her career. 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. She authored or co-authored more than 120 research papers as well as numerous popular articles and book reviews. A measure of the significance of her work is that 15 of her research papers were published in the journal Nature. Her one book, “Gaining Ground, The Origin and Evolution of Tetrapods” (2002), summarises the results of research on early tetrapods over the previous 25 years.

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