RIP Heinz Wolff

[ARW]

I loved The Great Egg Race

[F]

+1

A lovely man presenting science to a non-scientist audience. Thoroughly enjoyed watching him (and Eric Laithwaite).

[Harry Bloomfield]

F used his keyboard to write :

Even more so, the latter for me..

[Bob Eager]

Both of them. And Magnus Pyke. A nice man - had dinner with hime once.

[Robin]

Sorry but I cannot forgive Laithwaite for telling the nation's children[1] that gyroscopes violated the fundamental laws of classical physics.

[1] well the important ones who were watching the RI Xmas Lectures ;)

[Harry Bloomfield]

Bob Eager presented the following explanation :

I can imagine that - arms flying all over and the meal with it :-)

[Another Dave]

+1. He seemed to actually believe it. A professor! There was a time, long ago, when I could do the maths to prove him wrong. Something to do with vectors I recall.

Not just then. He was always on about it. Whether the grant committee believed him or not he got the money for his stupid experiments.

Another Dave

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yup. Rather more thought went into it than the modern versions like Scrap Yard Challenge.

[spuorgelgoog]

+2. Remember the theme tune?

They've taken his website down already, too.

Owain

[Andy Burns]

I doubt it's related to his death, looks more like whoever (in the USA) registered it a year ago, stopped paying for it and it was suspended last month.

Wayback shows that up to 2016 it was redirecting to his agent's website

[Bob Eager]

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Never worked on anything like that. ;-)

[John Rumm]

A true gent, and to a young lad. the quintessential embodiment of the benevolent slightly mad scientist - almost as if Professor Branestawm were made flesh.

Yup same here...

ISTR there were some in this group who actually competed on some of the shows.

[John Rumm]

ISTR you need to work in a rotating reference frame, and then the classical laws make sense again.

Stupid or not, he fired the imagination of many budding scientists and engineers.

[F]

His son was talking about him at length on BBC news earlier.

He talked about some of his inventions: things like a machine for counting patients? blood cells and the sticky pads used in heart monitoring. He was even responsible for components in the morphine pump he was on.

Much of the interview has been repeated on later bulletins.

[Brian-Gaff]

He was a one off really. He had more things going on than just tv silly games though. I have a recording of him reading a Les Barker poem somewhere. Brian

[pamela]

Not forgetting Patrick Moore.

[Bob Eager]

And arriving at his 80th birthday party in a carriage propelled by fire extinguishers

[F]

Ah. That explains the image I saw earlier. Priceless.

[Bob Eager]

I heard it on the radio - no image!