
Heinz Wolff has died - madaxe_again
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42378765
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mprev
For all we have some pretty good science programming in the UK, what with Jim
Al-Khalili, Brian Cox, Sky at Night and more, we're missing the Heinz Wolff
and Johnny Ball style characters who bring their subjects alive for children.

It'd be great to have a science-based equivalent to Horrible Histories.

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rwmj
For older children or adults, "Everyday Miracles" had only 2 episodes but they
were both pretty good. Also the presenter was really doing experiments and
going around factories where they make stuff showing exactly how things are
made.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04fh5tf](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04fh5tf)

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madaxe_again
I recall meeting him at a Royal Society Christmas lecture when I was a teen. I
was sat in the front row - and he asked for a volunteer. Needless to say,
muggins volunteered - to stick his naked hand in a flask of liquid nitrogen,
it transpired.

And this is how I first experienced the Leidenfrost effect, and understood
just how effectively boiling liquids can self-insulate.

He was an astoundingly good teacher, and an inspiration, to me, at least.

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hjjiehebebe
That could have gone quite wrong no?

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madaxe_again
He was very clear about dipping my hand in slowly, and not moving it at all,
as that would’ve shaken off the boundary and resulted in frostnip - but this
was the 90’s, when getting kids to put their hand in cryo was just one of
those things you do.

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timthorn
A number of episodes of The Great Egg Race are available on the BBC Archive:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/great_egg_race/](http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/great_egg_race/)

Wonderful stuff. RIP.

Oh - he was a contestant an episode of on The Adventure Game, which is now
available on DVD. Stands up very well to the test of time.

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austinjp
Very sad news. "The Great Egg Race" was a TV show I often think would lend
itself well to revival.

~~~
tomalpha
Hear hear on both counts.

Its gentle rivalry and lack of melodrama would be great to see again. It would
need a new presenter now of course, and they’d be pretty big shoes to fill.

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Lio
This is very sad news.

I loved seeing Heinz Wolff on TV as a child for two reasons.

First, like Johnny Ball, it was great to see a quirky, odd shaped personality
on TV instead of the usual slick drama school, artsy or journalist types.

For a nerdy kid like me Heinz was a wonderfully fun roll model.

Second, Heinz was German. In a country where sections of the media* still go
on about the Second World War at every political dealing with modern Germany,
Heinz was a well known “nice German”.

People like Heinz Wolff, Bauhaus and Kraftwerk made me a deutschophile. The
irony that he came to England from Germany as a Jewish refugee is not lost on
me.

*(My family lost my grandfather and two others fighting but it’s ridiculous how the tabloids still blame current generations of Germans for the past whilst pushing their own dodgy agendas).

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gusfoo
That's rather sad. I was one of the children that he inspired with his
remarkable works. I shall off to Youtube to re-watch some.

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peterclary
A very sad loss, and it's a great shame that we didn’t get more of The Great
Egg Race. I met him briefly while working as an assistant at Space School at
Brunel University one year.

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PaulAJ
I once attended a lecture he gave to an international audience. However the
Americans in the room complained that they couldn't understand anything he
said.

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lowbloodsugar
Bear to the right!

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4n0m4ly45
Lets pray that he is in a better place

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hutzlibu
I did not really know much of him, but enough, that this sentence

"A Jewish refugee, Wolff moved to the UK from Berlin at the age of 11 on the
day World War Two broke out in September 1939"

annoyed me very much. F____ stupid Nazis. By wanting to make Germany great
again, they destroyed so much of it ...

