Brian Cox
Brian Cox
Brian Denis Cox, CBEis a Scottish actor who works with the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he gained recognition for his portrayal of King Lear. He is also best known for appearing in The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, X2, Braveheart, Rushmore, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Troy and Doctor Who. He was the first actor to portray Hannibal Lecter on film in the 1986 feature film Manhunter...
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth1 June 1946
CityDundee, Scotland
fun rights religion
The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense!
beautiful confused complicated
You dig deeper and it gets more and more complicated, and you get confused, and it's tricky and it's hard, but... It is beautiful.
stars heart dying
Every carbon atom in every living thing on the planet was produced in the heart of a dying star.
needs different checks
Science is different to all other systems of thought because you dont need faith in it, you can check that it works.
rocks rock-n-roll geek
No one gets teased for being a geek anymore- science is the new rock n roll
rocks balls looks
Look at that! If you ever needed convincing that we live in the solar system, that we are on a ball of rock, orbiting around the Sun with other balls of rock, then look at that! That's the solar system coming down and grabbing you by the throat.
space our-world saws
For the first time, we saw our world, not as a solid, immovable, kind of indestructible place, but as a very small, fragile-looking world just hanging against the blackness of space.
eye practice darkness
One might say science is the sum total of our knowledge of the universe, the great library of the known, but the practice of science happens at the border between the known and the unknown. Standing on the shoulders of giants, we peer into the darkness with eyes opened not in fear but in wonder.
moving hands theory
Skepticism must go hand in hand with rationality. When theories are shown to be false, the correct thing to do is to move on.
law arrows forever
The story of the universe finally comes to an end. For the first time in its life, the universe will be permanent and unchanging. Entropy finally stops increasing because the cosmos cannot get any more disordered. Nothing happens, and it keeps not happening, forever. It's what's known as the heat-death of the universe. An era when the cosmos will remain vast and cold and desolate for the rest of time the arrow of time has simply ceased to exist. It's an inescapable fact of the universe written into the fundamental laws of physics, the entire cosmos will die.
important culture popular-culture
Science is too important not to be a part of popular culture.
new-york bridges white
For me, Woody Allen's 'Manhattan' defines New York. Both New York and Manhattan Island should be in black in white! I always hear the soundtrack of Gershwin in my head every time I go over the Queensboro Bridge, or come in from JFK because of it!
thinking people understanding
If people don’t have an understanding of what science is and what scientists do, then they can tend to think that global warming, for example, is just a matter of opinion.
knowing understanding benefits
At every stage of understanding the universe better, the benefits to civilisation have been immeasurable. None of those big leaps were made with us knowing what was going to happen.