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NOTA BENE: FILMS
Me & Isaac Newton Michael Apted, Director First Look Pictures, Los Angeles, 2000. See: http://www.clearblueskyfilms.com/documentaries/main/
Over a good dinner or a drink, scientists can often be coaxed into summoning up memories of what inspired them to choose a life of research. The more articulate of the species will also enlighten us on what it means to be a scientist and do science. Such reflections form the core of Michael Apted's new documentary film Me & Isaac Newton, which profiles seven researchers who are also superb communicators.
The seven come from a wide spectrum of fields and career points; they range from Maja Mataric, a young robotics researcher at the University of Southern California, to the late Nobel laureate Gertrude Elion, who never finished her Ph.D. but spent many decades searching for new cancer drugs with great success. With Newton, Apted is following the map of his earlier film Inspirations, in which he profiled seven artists, probing their work and their motivations. The new film also recalls Apted's most famous documentary work, the series of Seven Up and its sequels, which recorded the lives of a handful of British schoolchildren at seven-year intervals...