The man who made science fun
HEINZ WOLFF, the renowned Jewish scientist and television presenter, has died aged 89, after suffering heart problems.
Professor Wolff was best known to the public for hosting BBC Two’s science show The Great Egg Race, in the 1970s and ’80s.
His son, Laurence Wolff, said his father had touched people “through his ingenuity in terms of his inventing and his great belief in educating about science and technology”.
He had a “natural sense of fun and he knew that was also a way of engaging people. People would stop him in the street and say, ‘you got me into science.”
Born in Germany, Prof Wolff arrived in Britain as a refugee from Berlin on the day that World War Two broke out in 1939. “We really cut it rather fine,” he later recalled.
He attended the City of Oxford school and started his career as a lab technician at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford.
After a degree in physics and physiology at University College London, he worked for the Medical Research Council, becoming head of its biomedical engineering division in 1962.
He joined the European Space
Agency life science research group, specialising in how human beings could survive in hostile environments.
His boffin-like appearance and the fact that he never lost his German accent made him perfect eccentric professor material for TV — The Great Egg Race ran for 68 shows.
After he retired he became emeritus professor of bioengineering at London’s Brunel University. Professor Julia Buckingham, Brunel’s vicechancellor, said: “Heinz’s remarkable intellect, ideas and enthusiasm combined to make him the sparkling scientist we will so fondly remember.”
Prof Wolff’s wife Joan died in 2014. He is survived by two sons and four grandchildren.