Success 2013: Luis Suárez Miramontes, a Spanish former footballer and manager nicknamed El Arquitecto (The Architect). He became the first Spanish-born player to be voted Ballon d'Or (1960). In 1964 he helped Spain win the European Championship

Luis Suárez Miramontes (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈlwis ˈswaɾeθ miɾaˈmontes]; born 2 May 1935), also known by the diminutive Luisito, is a Spanish former footballer and manager. He played as a midfielder for Deportivo de La Coruña, CD España Industrial, CF Barcelona, Internazionale, Sampdoria and Spain.

Suárez is regarded as one of Spain's greatest players; as a player he was noted for his elegant, graceful style of play.Nicknamed El Arquitecto (The Architect) he was noted for his perceptive passing and explosive shot and in 1960 he became the first Spanish-born player to be voted Ballon d'Or.

In 1964 he helped Spain win the European Championship. Suarez originally achieved proeminence as a creative inside forward for the great FC Barcelona team of the 1950s before he joined Inter where he reached his prime as deep lying playmaker for the legendary Grande Inter team of the 1960s. He retired as a player in 1973, after three seasons at Sampdoria.


Suárez subsequently began a career as a coach and has managed Internazionale on three separate occasions, the last two on a caretaker basis. Suárez has also coached both Spain U21s and the senior Spain team. He was in charge of the latter for 27 games and led them to the second round of the 1990 World Cup. He has also coached several Italian and Spanish club sides. He is currently a scout for Internazionale Milan Football Club (IMFC).

Early career

Suárez was born in La Coruña, Galicia. He lived on Avenida de Hércules in the neighborhood of Monte Alto.
He began his professional career with Deportivo de La Coruña in 1949 and worked his way through the junior sides before making his La Liga debut with Deportivo on 6 December 1953 in a 6–1 defeat to FC Barcelona. Among his team mates at Deportivo were Pahiño and Arsenio Iglesias. He played 17 games and scored 3 goals for Deportivo during the remaining season. In 1954 he transferred to CF Barcelona and but spent most of the 1954–55 season playing for CD España Industrial in the Segunda División.

FC Barcelona

Between 1955 and 1961 Suárez was a regular in a FC Barcelona team that also included Ladislao Kubala, Zoltán Czibor, Sándor Kocsis, Ramallets and Evaristo. With Helenio Herrera as coach, the club and Suárez won a La Liga/Copa del Generalísimo double in 1959 and a La Liga/Fairs Cup double in 1960. Suárez was also voted European Footballer of the Year in 1960. One of his last games for FC Barcelona was the final of the European Cup in 1961 which they lost 3–2 to S.L. Benfica.

Internazionale

In 1961 Suárez became the world's most expensive footballer when FC Barcelona sold him to Internazionale for 250 million Italian liras (£142,000). The move saw him follow his mentor Helenio Herrera.
Suárez became a regular in the Great Inter team that won three Serie A titles, two consecutive European Cups and two Intercontinental Cups. Between 1961 and 1970 he made 328 appearances for Inter and scored 55 goals.

Spain

Suárez also played 32 games for Spain and scored 14 goals. He made his debut on 6 December 1957 in a 6–1 victory over the Netherlands and represented Spain at both the 1962 and 1966 World Cups. However his greatest achievement with Spain came in 1964 when, together with Josep Maria Fusté, Amancio Amaro, José Ángel Iribar and Jesús María Pereda, he helped them win the European Championship. He played his final game for Spain in 1972.

• Luis Suarez Miramontes, playmaker extraordinaire, turns 78

Born in La Coruna on 2 May 1935, Luisito wrote history as part of the Grande Inter team in the sixties

MILAN – If Inter were a film, he would be the Oscar-winning director. Luis Suarez Miramontes, simply Luisito to many, played for the Nerazzurri during the marvellous Grande Inter years, from 1961 to 1970. He joined from Barcelona having already won the Ballon d'Or, his transfer from Spain to Italy based on an original idea by Helenio Herrera and adapted by Angelo Moratti. Barcelona are said to have completed their stadium, the Camp Nou, with the money from his sale.
At Inter he won three league titles, two European Cups and two Intercontinental Cups. His inch-perfect passing from the deep-lying playmaker role remains legendary. He has stayed in Italy ever since: after ending his playing days at Sampdoria, he began a coaching career and has helped Inter out on a number of occasions.
These are his numbers in black and blue: 257 Serie A appearances and 42 goals, 49 European games and 8 goals, 22 Coppa Italia appearances with 4 goals. In total 328 matches and 54 goals.

Legends of La Liga: Luis Suarez Miramontes

Luis Suarez Miramontes born May 2nd 1935 started his career in 1949 with Deportivo De La Coruna. Working his way through the youth system he made his La Liga debut in 1953 when the side lost 6-1 to Barcelona. He went on to to score three times in 17 games that season doing enough on the pitch to earn a contract from Barcelona.
Suarez quickly earned a reputation as a creative midfielder coming up with 10 plus goals from midfield in almost every season at the club. in 1959 Suarez was key to the team scoring 20 goals in a double winning season (La Liga and Copa Del Rey).
 A year later Suarez led Barca to another title scoring 14 times, his efforts were respected on a worldwide level as the midfielder became the first Spanish born player to win the Ballon D’or.

He left the club in 1961 with one of his last games for the club being a 3-2 loss in the European Cup final against Benfica. After that year Suarez was done with Spanish football moving to Inter Milan the next year with a record of 61 goals in 122 games for the Catalan side.
Suarez went on to be key for Spain winning the European Championships in 1964 a true achievement for the nation.
The Spaniard finished his career in in 1973, Suarez is regarded as one of Spain’s greatest players. Nicknamed El Arquitecto (The Architect).

Sir Geoff Hurst, unicul fotbalist care a izbutit un hat-trick într-o finală de Campionat Mondial

Sir Geoffrey Charles Hurst este un fost international englez care a intrat in istoria jocului dupa World Cup 1966, cand a reusit sa marcheze 3 goluri in finala, performanta nefiind egalata inca. Anglia a invins atunci RFG, pe celebrul stadion Wembley. Hurst imbraca pentru a opta oara tricoul nationalei Albionului, debutul sau petrecandu-se cu doar cinci luni mai devreme.

Erwin Waldner, internaţional german

Internaţional german de fotbal care a jucat ca atacant. Campion cu Stuttgart în 1954 şi câştigător a două Cupe ale Germaniei, în '54 şi '58. A mai jucat în campionatele elveţian şi italian. Pentru naţionala Germaniei a jucat 13 partide, marcând 2 goluri. Autograf solicitat prin email.

Arvydas Sabonis, a Lithuanian retired professional basketball player and businessman. One of the best European players of his era, he won the Euroscar Award six times, and the Mr. Europa Award twice, spent seven seasons in the NBA

Arvydas Romas Sabonis (born December 19, 1964) is a Lithuanian retired professional basketball player and businessman. Recognized as one of the best European players of his era, he won the Euroscar Award six times, and the Mr. Europa Award twice. He played in a variety of leagues, and spent seven seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA) in the United States. Sabonis played the center position and also won a gold medal at the 1988 Summer Olympics in South Korea for the Soviet Union, and later earned bronze medals at the 1992 and 1996 games while playing for Lithuania. He retired from professional basketball in 2005.
Sabonis is considered one of the best big man passers as well as one of the best overall centers in the history of the game. Bill Walton once called Sabonis a 7'3" Larry Bird due to his unique court vision, shooting range, rugged in-game mentality, and versatility.
On August 20, 2010, Sabonis was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame in recognition of his great play in international competition. On April 4, 2011, Sabonis was named to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and he was inducted on August 12, 2011. At that time, he was the tallest player to ever enter the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame; one year later, he would be surpassed by 7'4" Ralph Sampson. On October 24, 2011, Sabonis was voted to be the next president of the Lithuanian Basketball Federation. He resigned from the position on October 2, 2013, but came back on October 10, 2013.

Sabonis made his professional debut in 1981 with one of the oldest basketball teams in Lithuania, BC Žalgiris, in his hometown of Kaunas. He won three consecutive Soviet League titles and reached the 1986 Euroleague finals with the team.
Sabonis was selected by the Atlanta Hawks with the 77th pick of the 1985 NBA Draft. However, the selection was voided because Sabonis was under 21 at the time of the draft. The following spring, he suffered a devastating Achilles' tendon injury. Nevertheless, he was selected by the Portland Trail Blazers with the 24th pick of the 1986 NBA Draft.
Sabonis was not allowed to play in the NBA by Soviet authorities until 1989. However, he did go to Portland to rehabilitate his injury with Blazers trainers. He also practiced with the team.
In the 1988 Summer Olympics, Sabonis led the Soviet Union to a gold medal with a win against a United States team that featured future NBA All-Stars David Robinson, Mitch Richmond and Danny Manning in the semi-finals. The team later beat Yugoslavia in the finals.
The 1985–1988 stretch of a heavy playing schedule and lack of rest took a significant toll on Sabonis' future health and durability. Various leg injuries weren't given much time to heal due to the Cold War climate that surrounded international competition as well as BC Žalgiris – CSKA Moscow games. In a 2011 interview, Sabonis expressed an opinion that overuse by the coaches of the Soviet national program was a major contributing factor to his first Achilles' tendon injury back in 1986. Another key moment for his future health took place in 1988 when Sabonis had a surgical Achilles procedure performed in Portland but was rushed back on the floor with the USSR Olympic team before a full recovery. The decision to include a limping Sabonis on the USSR roster for the 1988 Olympic games was protested at the time by Portland medical staff and was later heavily criticized. Eventually Sabonis would develop chronic knee, ankle and groin issues that substantially limited his mobility and explosiveness by the mid-1990s.
In 1992, after playing with CB Valladolid for three seasons, Sabonis joined Real Madrid and won two Spanish League titles and a Euroleague title in 1995. During the 1994–95 regular season with Real Madrid, he averaged 22.8 points, 13.2 rebounds, 2.6 blocked shots, and 2.4 assists per game.
After the 1994–95 European season, Sabonis and Portland contacted one another about a move to the NBA. Before signing Sabonis, Portland's then-general manager Bob Whitsitt asked the Blazers team physician to look at Sabonis' X-rays. Illustrating the impact of Sabonis' numerous injuries, Whitsitt recalled in a 2011 interview that when the doctor reported the results, "He said that Arvydas could qualify for a handicapped parking spot based on the X-ray alone." Nevertheless, the Blazers signed Sabonis. He had a successful rookie campaign, averaging 14.5 points on 55% shooting and 8.1 rebounds while playing less than 24 minutes per game.  Sabonis was selected to the All-Rookie First Team and was runner-up in both Rookie of the Year a   In the first playoff series of his NBA career, Portland lost to Utah in five games.
Sabonis averaged 16.0 points, 10.0 rebounds and 3.0 assists in 1997–98, all career-highs.
During Sabonis' first leg in Portland the Blazers always made the playoffs (part of a 21-year streak); between 1998 and 1999 the Oregon franchise changed large parts of its roster in order to compete for the title (after six consecutive first round losses), with center Sabonis the only player remaining in the starting five. Kenny Anderson and Isiah Rider were traded for Damon Stoudemire and Steve Smith. In both those years the Blazers reached the Western Conference Finals; in 1999 they were swept by the eventual champions, the San Antonio Spurs, while the next year the team (starting Sabonis, Smith, Stoudemire, Wallace and recently added Scottie Pippen) lost to the Los Angeles Lakers (at the beginning of the Shaq-Kobe three-peat) in 7 games.
He won the Euroscar Award twice while playing with the Blazers. He also became a fan favorite.
The question that surrounds Sabonis' NBA career revolves around how good he could have been had he played in the NBA during his prime. Sabonis was nearly 31 when he joined the Blazers, by which time he had already won multiple gold medals, suffered through numerous injuries and had lost much of his mobility and athleticism. In Bill Simmons' "Book of Basketball", Arvydas Sabonis the international player is idealized while Arvydas Sabonis the Blazer is described as "lumbering up and down the court in what looked to be concrete Nikes" and ranking "just behind Artis Gilmore on the Moving Like a Mummy Scale." In ESPN's David Thorpe's view, Sabonis would be the best passing big in NBA history and possibly top 4 center overall, had he played his entire career there.In Clyde Drexler's view, if Sabonis had been able to spend his prime in Portland next to the plethora of other Trail Blazers' All Stars (Drexler, Terry Porter, Buck Williams and "Cliff" Robinson), Trail Blazers would "have had four, five or six titles. Guaranteed. He was that good. He could pass, shoot three pointers, had a great post game, and dominated the paint."
After the 2000–2001 NBA season, Sabonis refused to sign an extension with Trail Blazers and retired from the NBA. In his own words, he "was tired mentally and physically." Instead, he returned to Europe where he signed a one-year deal at nominal salary with Žalgiris, expecting to join the team for most important games down the stretch. However, he ended up missing that season in its entirety resting and recovering from injuries. Sabonis rejoined Trail Blazers for one final season in 2002–2003.
Sabonis came back to Žalgiris to play his final season in 2003–2004. He led the team to the Top 16 stage of the Euroleague that year and was named the Regular Season MVP and the Top 16 MVP. He also became the team's president.Sabonis would officially retire in 2005.
Sabonis was awarded a silver medal at the 2013 EuroBasket tournament as the LKF president.

Vera Miles, an american film actress who gained popularity for starring in films such as Psycho, The Searchers, The Wrong Man, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Vera Miles (born August 23, 1930) is an American film actress who gained popularity for starring in films such as The Searchers, The Wrong Man, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Psycho and Psycho II.

Miles was born as Vera June Ralston in Boise City, Oklahoma, the daughter of Burnice (née Wyrick) and Thomas Ralston. She grew up in Pratt, Kansas, and later, in Wichita, Kansas, where she worked nights as a Western Union operator-typist and graduated from Wichita North High School in 1947. She was crowned Miss Kansas in 1948, placing third in the Miss America contest.
She appeared on the April 4, 1951, edition of the Groucho Marx quiz series You Bet Your Life described as "a beauty contest winner". Groucho asks her, "What are some of the beauty titles you've held?" and she replies, "I was first Miss Chamber of Commerce and then Miss Wichita and then Miss Kansas and Miss Texas Grapefruit and recently I've been chosen Miss New Maid Margarine and I had the honour to represent Kansas in the Miss America pageant."
She moved to Los Angeles where, in 1950, she landed small roles in film and television. These included a minor part as a chorus girl in Two Tickets to Broadway (1951), a musical starring Janet Leigh, with whom Miles would go on to co-star nine years later in the classic Alfred Hitchcock film, Psycho. Attracting the attention of several producers, the actress was put under contract at various studios where she posed for cheesecake and publicity photographs, as was standard procedure for most up-and-coming Hollywood starlets of the era.
Under contract to Warner Bros., Miles was cast in films such as The Charge At Feather River in 3-D, but lost out on doing a big 3-D hit starring Vincent Price, House of Wax, for which she was considered. She once recalled: "I was dropped by the best studios in town." In Tarzan's Hidden Jungle, filmed in 1954 and released in 1955, she played Tarzan's love interest (not named "Jane" in this film). In 1954, she married her Tarzan co-star, Gordon Scott; they divorced in 1959.
Film director John Ford chose Miles to star as Jeffrey Hunter's love interest in The Searchers (1956), starring John Wayne. A year later, Miles began a five-year personal contract with Alfred Hitchcock and was widely publicized as the director's potential successor to Grace Kelly. Miles' new mentor directed her in the role of the emotionally troubled new bride of Ralph Meeker in the pilot episode of his popular television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents (titled "Revenge"). Suitably impressed, Hitchcock directed her on the big screen alongside Henry Fonda (who played a New York musician falsely accused of a crime) in The Wrong Man (1956). New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther singled out Miles' performance, writing that she "does convey a poignantly pitiful sense of fear of the appalling situation into which they have been cast". Hitchcock undertook a reinvention of his new star through grooming and wardrobe supervised by Oscar-winning costume designer Edith Head.
Production delays and her pregnancy (a son, Michael, with then-husband Gordon Scott) cost Miles the dual leading role opposite James Stewart in Vertigo (1958), the project Hitchcock designed as a showcase for his new star. The director replaced Miles with Kim Novak, with whom he had clashed. When asked several years later about Miles by director François Truffaut for the book Hitchcock/Truffaut, Hitchcock explained their professional falling-out this way: "She became pregnant just before the part that was going to turn her into a star". "After that, I lost interest. I couldn't get the rhythm going with her again." Miles reflected, "Over the span of years, he's had one type of woman in his films, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly and so on, before that, it was Madeleine Carroll. I'm not their type and never have been. I tried to please him but I couldn't. They are all sexy women, but mine is an entirely different approach".
In 1959, Miles and Van Johnson worked together again in Web of Evidence, which was adapted from A. J. Cronin's novel, Beyond This Place. A year later, Hitchcock cast her as Lila Crane in Psycho (1960), in which her character discovers the truth about Norman Bates and his mother. Miles, while making the thriller, called it "the weirdy of all times".

In 1957, Miles guest starred on NBC's The Steve Allen Show. On January 9, 1958, Miles appeared on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford.
On January 7, 1960, Miles appeared as Jenny Breckenridge in the "Miss Jenny" episode of Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater Western television series on CBS, opposite Ben Cooper in the role of Darryl Thompson and Jack Elam as Little Jimmy Lehigh.^[3] The following month she starred in the classic Twilight Zone episode "Mirror Image".
She co-starred with Susan Hayward and John Gavin in a glossy remake of the melodrama about adultery, Back Street (1961), directed by David Miller and based on the much-filmed 1931 novel by Fannie Hurst.
Then came another role in a John Ford western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), with Stewart and John Wayne (who compete for her attention). Miles won a Bronze Wrangler citation from Western Heritage Awards, which she shared with director Ford, writer James Warner Bellah and her fellow actors, including Lee Marvin and Edmond O'Brien. She would play opposite Wayne again in Hellfighters (1968). She also appeared in the TV Western The Virginian.
In 1966, she would co-star in the movie Follow Me, Boys! alongside Fred MacMurray.
In 1962 and 1963, she appeared on NBC's medical drama about psychiatry, The Eleventh Hour, in two episodes entitled "Beauty Playing a Mandolin Underneath a Willow Tree" as Kate Sommers and in "Ann Costigan: A Duel on a Field of White" as the title character. She also appeared in an episode of The Outer Limits ("The Forms of Things Unknown") in 1964.
She did a great deal of television work, including a wife being stalked by an abusive husband in the premier episode of The Fugitive, as an amnesiac in an episode of Ironside ("Barbara Who", 1968) and as a homicidal beauty-products mogul in one of the Columbo episodes, before reprising her most famous role of Lila Crane in Psycho II (1983). Throughout the 1980s and thereafter, Miles continued to work in both television and film until her retirement in 1995.
Miles resides in California and refuses any public relations offers, including interviews and public appearances and has maintained a low profile since her retirement.
Miles' first husband was Bob Miles; they were married from 1948–1954 and had two daughters: Debra Miles, born in 1950, and Kelley Miles, born in 1952.
After their divorce, she was married to Gordon Scott from 1954 until 1959, and they had one son, Michael Scott, born in 1957.
After their divorce, she was married to actor Keith Larsen from 1960 until 1971, and they had one son, Erik Larsen, born in Burbank, California on April 30, 1961. Keith remarried after their divorce in 1971, but Vera remains single.

Success 2013: Tony Brooks, British former racing driver from England also known as the "racing dentist". He participated in 39 Formula One World Championship Grands Prix, and scored the first win by a British driver in a British car in a Grand Prix since 1923

Charles Anthony "Tony" Standish Brooks (born in Dukinfield, Cheshire, 25 February 1932) is a British former racing driver from England also known as the "racing dentist". He participated in 39 Formula One World Championship Grands Prix, debuting on 14 July 1956, and scored the first win by a British driver in a British car in a Grand Prix since 1923, in 1955 driving a Connaught at Syracuse in a non World Championship race.




Brooks was born on 25 February 1932 in Dukinfield, Chesire. He is the son of a dental surgeon and studied the practice himself. He took up racing in 1952 and drove a Healey at club events until 1955. In that same year, Brooks drove a Formula Two Connaught at Crystal Palace and finished fourth.

Brooks claimed the first victory for a British-constructed car in a World Championship race in the 1957 British Grand Prix at Aintree, which he shared with Sir Stirling Moss. Along with Moss, Brooks is considered one the best drivers never to have been World Champion and both Moss and three-time World Champion Jack Brabham were known to have thought highly of his ability.



Brooks won six races for Vanwall and Ferrari, secured four pole positions, achieved ten podiums, and scored a total of 74 championship points. He drove for BRM but retired from the team at the end of 1961, just before their most successful season.

In 2008, Brooks was honoured by his home town. Dukinfield District Assembly, part of Tameside Council, held a dinner in his honour and unveiled a plaque outside his former home on Park Lane.

Tony Brooks won the 1957 British Grand Prix sharing his car with Stirling Moss. Both were awarded half points for their victory (4 instead of 8).

Brooks was also awarded one point in the 1957 Italian Grand Prix and 1959 German Grand Prix for recording the fastest lap.
  
Tony Brooks: Poetry in Motion

It took 15 years of relentless persuasion to convince Tony Brooks, one of Britain's greatest ever racing drivers, that he should write his autobiography. Throughout his racing career he shunned publicity, preferring to let his on-track performances speak for themselves. This is why Stirling Moss, on many occasions his team-mate in Formula 1 and sports car races, has described him as 'the greatest 'little known' driver of all time'. Tony Brooks began his racing career at Goodwood in 1952 at the wheel of his mother's Healey sports car. Three years later, having never previously sat in a Formula 1 car, he drove a Connaught to victory in the Syracuse Grand Prix, beating the entire Maserati works team. It was the first Grand Prix victory for a British car and driver for 31 years. His unique combination of speed and smoothness, aptly chosen by him as his book title Poetry in Motion, led to works drives with Aston Martin, BRM, Vanwall and Ferrari and brought him Grand Prix victories on Europe's most challenging circuits - Spa, the Nürburgring and Monza.


DRIVERS: TONY BROOKS

Name: Tony Brooks
Nationality: Great Britain
Date of birth: February 25, 1932 - Dunkinfield, Chesire

The son of a dental surgeon, Brooks studied dentistry and took up racing in 1952 at the wheel of a Healey. He raced mainly in club events for the next three seasons and in 1955 was offered the chance to try a Formula 2 Connaught at Crystal Palace. He finished an impressive fourth behind three F1 cars. That year he was offered a factory Aston Martin drive and further good performances resulted in him being given the chance to drive an F1 Connaught in the non-championship Syracuse Grand Prix in Sicily. Despite studying for his final examinations he flew down to Sicily and won the race, becoming the first British driver driver to win in a British car on the Continent since Sir Henry Seagrave's victory at the San Sebastian Grand Prix in 1924.

When he returned to Britain he was signed by BRM for the 1956 season and made his World Championship debut at Silverstone where the car suffered a stuck throttle and he crashed heavily, being thrown out and suffering a fractured jaw. At the end of the season quit BRM to join Vanwall in F1 while continuing to race for Aston Martin in sportscars. he finished second at Monaco and shared victory at the British GP at Aintree, handing his car over to Stirling Moss after his car had broken down. In 1958 Brooks won the Belgian, German, and Italian GPs but finished third in the World Championship behind Mike Hawthorn and Stirling Moss.
Vanwall withdrew from racing at the end of that year and Brooks sign to drive in 1959 for Ferrari. He won the French and German GPs but that year the Italian cars were outpaced by the rear-engined Cooper being driven by Jack Brabham. Brooks finished runner-up in the World Championship.
In 1960 Brooks returned to Britain, joining the Yeoman Credit Cooper team. He scored points on three occasions but increasingly he looked after his garage business in Weybridge. The following year he went back to BRM but it was another disappointing year and at the end of that season he retired from the sport.

Success 2013: Sir David Attenborough, famous English broadcaster and naturalist, best known for writing and presenting the nine Life series. He was named as the most trusted celebrity in Britain in a 2006 Reader's Digest poll

Sir David Frederick Attenborough, OM CH CVO CBE FRS FZS FSA (born 8 May 1926) is an English broadcaster and naturalist.

His career as the face and voice of natural history programmes has endured for 60 years. He is best known for writing and presenting the nine Life series, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, which collectively form a comprehensive survey of all life on the planet. He is also a former senior manager at the BBC, having served as controller of BBC Two and director of programming for BBC Television in the 1960s and 1970s. He is the only person to have won a BAFTA in black and white, colour, HD and 3D.
Attenborough is widely considered a national treasure in Britain, although he himself does not like the term. In 2002 he was named among the 100 Greatest Britons following a UK-wide vote. He is a younger brother of the director, producer and actor Richard Attenborough.

Attenborough was born in Isleworth, west London, but grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester, where his father, Frederick, was principal. He is the middle of three sons (his elder brother, Richard, became an actor and his younger brother, John, an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo).During World War II, through a British government initiative known as Kindertransport, his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Europe.
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.
In 1950 Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel; the marriage lasted until her death in 1997. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan.Robert is a senior lecturer in bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra.

After leaving the Navy, Attenborough took a position editing children's science textbooks for a publishing company. He soon became disillusioned with the work and in 1950 applied for a job as a radio talk producer with the BBC. Although he was rejected for this job, his CV later attracted the interest of Mary Adams, head of the Talks (factual broadcasting) department of the BBC's fledgling television service. Attenborough, like most Britons at that time, did not own a television, and he had seen only one programme in his life. However, he accepted Adams' offer of a three-month training course, and in 1952 he joined the BBC full-time. Initially discouraged from appearing on camera because Adams thought his teeth were too big, he became a producer for the Talks department, which handled all non-fiction broadcasts. His early projects included the quiz show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? and Song Hunter, a series about folk music presented by Alan Lomax.
Attenborough's association with natural history programmes began when he produced and presented the three-part series The Pattern of Animals. The studio-bound programme featured animals from London Zoo, with the naturalist Julian Huxley discussing their use of camouflage, aposematism and courtship displays. Through this programme, Attenborough met Jack Lester, the curator of the zoo's reptile house, and they decided to make a series about an animal-collecting expedition. The result was Zoo Quest, first broadcast in 1954, where Attenborough became the presenter at short notice due to Lester being taken ill.
In 1957 the BBC Natural History Unit was formally established in Bristol. Attenborough was asked to join it, but declined, not wishing to move from London where he and his young family were settled. Instead, he formed his own department, the Travel and Exploration Unit, which allowed him to continue to front Zoo Quest as well as produce other documentaries, notably the Travellers' Tales and Adventure series.
In the early 1960s, Attenborough resigned from the permanent staff of the BBC to study for a postgraduate degree in social anthropology at the London School of Economics, interweaving his study with further filming. However, he accepted an invitation to return to the BBC as controller of BBC Two before he could finish the degree.
Beginning with Life on Earth in 1979, Attenborough set about creating a body of work which became a benchmark of quality in wildlife film-making and influenced a generation of documentary film-makers. The series also established many of the hallmarks of the BBC's natural history output. By treating his subject seriously and researching the latest discoveries, Attenborough and his production team gained the trust of the scientific community, who responded by allowing him to feature their subjects in his programmes. In Rwanda, for example, Attenborough and his crew were granted privileged access to film Dian Fossey's research group of mountain gorillas. Innovation was another factor in Life on Earth's success: new film-making techniques were devised to get the shots Attenborough wanted, with a focus on events and animals that were hitherto unfilmed. Computerised airline schedules, which had only recently been introduced, enabled the series to be elaborately devised so that Attenborough visited several locations around the globe in each episode, sometimes even changing continents mid-sentence. Although appearing as the on-screen presenter, he consciously restricted his pieces to camera to give his subjects top billing.
The success of Life on Earth prompted the BBC to consider a follow-up, and five years later, The Living Planet was screened. This time, Attenborough built his series around the theme of ecology, the adaptations of living things to their environment. It was another critical and commercial success, generating huge international sales for the BBC. In 1990 The Trials of Life completed the original Life trilogy, looking at animal behaviour through the different stages of life. The series drew strong reactions from the viewing public for its sequences of killer whales hunting sea lions on a Patagonian beach and chimpanzees hunting and violently killing a colobus monkey.
In the 1990s, Attenborough continued to use the "Life" moniker for a succession of authored documentaries. In 1993 he presented Life in the Freezer, the first television series to survey the natural history of Antarctica. Although past normal retirement age, he then embarked on a number of more specialised surveys of the natural world, beginning with plants. They proved a difficult subject for his producers, who had to deliver five hours of television featuring what are essentially immobile objects. The result, The Private Life of Plants (1995), showed plants as dynamic organisms by using time-lapse photography to speed up their growth.
Prompted by an enthusiastic ornithologist at the BBC Natural History Unit, Attenborough then turned his attention to the animal kingdom and in particular, birds. As he was neither an obsessive twitcher, nor a bird expert, he decided he was better qualified to make The Life of Birds (1998) on the theme of behaviour. The order of the remaining "Life" series was dictated by developments in camera technology. For The Life of Mammals (2002), low-light and infrared cameras were deployed to reveal the behaviour of nocturnal mammals. The series contains a number of memorable two shots of Attenborough and his subjects, which included chimpanzees, a blue whale and a grizzly bear. Advances in macro photography made it possible to capture natural behaviour of very small creatures for the first time, and in 2005, Life in the Undergrowth introduced audiences to the world of invertebrates.

Attenborough was named as the most trusted celebrity in Britain in a 2006 Reader's Digest poll,. and the following year he won The Culture Show's Living Icon Award. He has also been named among the 100 Greatest Britons in a 2002 BBC poll and is one of the top ten "Heroes of Our Time" according to New Statesman magazine