12 Facts About Heinz Wolff

Heinz Wolff was best known for the BBC television series The Great Egg Race.

Heinz Wolff's father, Oswald Wolff, was a volunteer in World War I and a publisher specializing in German history.

Heinz Wolff was educated at the City of Oxford High School for Boys.

Heinz Wolff worked in haematology at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford under Robert Gwyn Macfarlane, where he invented a machine for counting patients' blood cells, before joining the Pneumoconiosis Research Unit at Llandough Hospital near Cardiff.

Heinz Wolff went on to University College London, where he gained a first class honours degree in physiology and physics.

Heinz Wolff spent much of his early career in bioengineering, a term he coined in 1954 to take account of recent advances in physiology.

Heinz Wolff became an honorary member of the European Space Agency in 1975, and in 1983 he founded the Brunel Institute for Bioengineering, which was involved in biological research during weightless spaceflight.

Heinz Wolff was the scientific director and co-founder of Project Juno, the private British-Soviet joint venture which sent Helen Sharman to the Mir space station.

Heinz Wolff is credited with the invention of the gel pad electrodes used in ECGs.

In 2007, Heinz Wolff made a guest appearance on Channel 4's Comedy Lab episode "Karl Pilkington: Satisfied Fool", where he is seen explaining to Pilkington the sudden rise of intelligence in Homo sapiens.

For many years Professor Heinz Wolff was the President of Hampstead Scientific Society.

Heinz Wolff is survived by his two sons, Anthony and Laurence.