Prized specimen: Television’s Dolittle becomes honorary doctor

HE collects accolades these days the way he used to collect specimens, but while scrolls and titles may lack the exoticism of jungle crawlies and undersea oddities, David Attenborough is no less gracious in receiving them.

The latest addition to Attenborough’s academic menagerie is an honorary degree from Trinity College Dublin, which he picked up yesterday in the company of a number of similarly lauded luminaries from the world of scientific and literary endeavour.

Sadly, the 82-year-old Attenborough is considered something of a protected species himself, and although the veteran naturalist has encountered komodo dragons, killer whales and parasites far more unpleasant than reporters, the organisers did not permit the assembled media to speak with him.

But the pioneering filmmaker who has brought the natural world into the living rooms of three generations of wide-eyed viewers did give the famously toothy grin that, in his early days in TV production, prompted a senior executive to declare he could never go in front of the camera with teeth that big.

His latest honour, a doctor in letters, was awarded for his “significant contribution to natural history and broadcasting”. The citation read: “As a pioneer of nature documentaries for over 50 years, David Attenborough is the highly respected face and voice of natural history programmes broadcast world-wide. His series have been highly influential in raising both an appreciation of the natural world and awareness of the environmental crisis threatening it.”

Attenborough signalled his retirement earlier this year with the release of his latest work, In Cold Blood, which focuses on reptiles and amphibians and which he considered the final part of the Life series which he began in 1979 with Life on Earth.

But icons like Attenborough rarely retire — they just evolve — so it is appropriate that he has since spoken of his intention to work on a production about Charles Darwin and his theories of evolution.

Attenborough was joined by several dozen PhD students on the walk through Trinity’s Exam Hall to collect his doctorate in a traditional ceremony conducted entirely through Latin — no trouble for a man who has a hedgehog-like echidna, Zaglossus attenboroughi, and a fossilised fish, Materpiscis attenboroughi, named after him.

He was also accompanied by acclaimed astrophysicist and promoter of women in science, Jocelyn Bell Burnell; mechanical engineer and leading light in the international Silent Aircraft Initiative, Ann Dowling and psychological criminologist, David P Farrington, who all received doctorates in science.

Terry Pratchett, the science fantasy author, satirist and campaigner for research into Alzheimer’s disease, with which he has been diagnosed, was honoured with a doctorate in letters.