By Mukesh 
David Attenborough is celebrating his 100th birthday today, a milestone in a remarkable life that has taken him from hunting fossils as a boy to becoming perhaps the world’s most celebrated naturalist.
Tributes are arriving from across the globe — from the Royal Albert Hall in London to the galley of the Royal Research Ship Sir David Attenborough in the Antarctic — for a man who has dedicated his life to communicating the wonders of nature, and their fragility.
At the Natural History Museum in London, scientists marked the occasion by naming a species of parasitic wasp after him, one of more than 50 animals, insects and plants that now carry a version of his name.
“I had rather thought that I would celebrate my 100th birthday quietly, but it seems that many of you have had other ideas,” he said in an audio recording released ahead of his birthday, adding that he was “completely overwhelmed” by the number of birthday greetings he received.
Look back on his extraordinary life and career.
A life-changing boyhood find
Mr. Attenborough was born in London in 1926 and spent his youth on the campus of what is today the University of Leicester, where his father Frederick Attenborough was second principal. In a moment that would define his life, he was scouring rocks in the English countryside in the late 1930s, when he split one open with a hammer — revealing the fossil of a marine mollusk.
“My eyes were the first to see it since its occupant died 200 million years ago,” he said in a 2009 documentary.
“I suppose it’s true to say that it was one of the key moments of my life,” he added. “I have been repeating that moment, off and on, throughout my life and the thrill has still not worn off.”
He enrolled at Clare College, part of the University of Cambridge, in 1945, where he studied natural sciences, including geology and zoology. After graduating, he was called to serve for two years in the Royal Navy and was stationed locally in North Wales.
The Museums Special Section
In 1950, he married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel, who died in 1997.
A filmmaker at heart
After military service, Mr. Attenborough took a job editing science books for children, which he left in 1952. He joined the BBC as a television producer — an interesting choice as he did not own a television at the time. Two years later, he helped launch “Zoo Quest,” which, according to the BBC, was the first natural history series to use footage shot on location.
Mr. Attenborough, who joined the show’s expeditions, was part of a team that was the first to film several rare birds and the Komodo dragon, according to the network.
In 1965, he became the head of the recently launched BBC Two, the corporation’s second channel, where he oversaw the creation of the sketch comedy show “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and the introduction of color television. In 1969 he was promoted to the director of programming for the entire BBC, but by then had tired of corporate life. He resigned a few years later to return to filmmaking full time.
“That’s what I enjoy,” he said at the time.
Redefining nature documentaries
In 1979, Mr. Attenborough released “Life on Earth” on the BBC, a four-year labor of love that was filmed in more than 100 locations and explored the evolution of life of the planet.
The series was the first to capture footage of several species and their behaviors, including the courtship displays of birds of paradise, according to the BBC. It also featured a striking moment in Rwanda, when Mr. Attenborough sat among a group of gorillas.
“The encounter I had with the gorillas — it seemed to go on forever,” he said of the experience. “And I was kind of in paradise. I lost all sense of time.”
The series was a great success, seen by more than 500 million people worldwide, according to the BBC, and ushered in a new era of nature documentaries.
“In the early 1950s, when Attenborough joined the BBC, natural history television had been mostly conceived of as a specialist genre catering for amateur naturalists,” Jean-Baptiste Gouyon, a professor of science communication at University College London, wrote for The Conversation U.K. “By the 1980s, he had helped transform it into one of the most popular genres of TV programming and a powerful conduit for science communication.”
Mr. Attenborough followed up “Life on Earth” with similar documentaries, including “The Living Planet,” “The Blue Planet” and “Life of Birds.”
In 1985, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his service to broadcasting and television. He was knighted a second time by Prince Charles in 2022 for his services to television and conservation.
A voice for the planet
In the past, some conservationists have criticized Mr. Attenborough and his programs for failing to show humanity’s detrimental impact on the planet, including singling out the forces driving global warming or extinctions.
He was initially cautious about the idea of man-made climate change, but that changed when he attended a lecture in 2004. There he be became convinced, beyond any doubt, that humans were responsible, according to The Guardian. .
In 2017, he narrated “Blue Planet II,” which raised an alarm about plastic pollution, and in 2019, he narrated Netflix’s “Our Planet,” a series that stressed the harm humankind has done to the natural world.
In recent years, he has urged world leaders to work together to address climate change. In 2022, he received a lifetime achievement award from the United Nations, for his dedication to addressing issues like climate change, species loss and pollution.
In 2020, he released “A Life on Our Planet,” a book and documentary that he called his “witness statement.” It is a full-throated condemnation of environmental destruction.
“All we require is the will,” he wrote in the book. “The next few decades represent a final opportunity to build a stable home for ourselves and restore the rich, healthy and wonderful world that we inherited from our distant ancestors. Our future on the planet, the only place as far as we know where life of any kind exists, is at stake.”