WThe Aeronauts is a 2019 semi-biographical adventure film directed by Tom Harper and written by Jack Thorne, from a story co-written by Thorne and Harper. The film is based on the 2013 book Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air by Richard Holmes. Produced by Todd Lieberman, David Hoberman, and Harper, the film stars Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, Himesh Patel and Tom Courtenay.
WAmmonite is a 2020 romantic drama film written and directed by Francis Lee. The film is loosely inspired by the life of British palaeontologist Mary Anning, played by Kate Winslet. The film centres on a speculative romantic relationship between Anning and Charlotte Murchison, played by Saoirse Ronan. Gemma Jones, James McArdle, Alec Secăreanu and Fiona Shaw also star.
WCopenhagen is a 2002 British television drama film written and directed by Howard Davies, and starring Daniel Craig, Stephen Rea, and Francesca Annis. It is based on Michael Frayn's 1998 Tony Award-winning three-character play of the same name.
WCreation is a 2009 British biographical drama film about Charles Darwin's relationship with his wife Emma and his memory of their eldest daughter Annie, as he struggles to write On the Origin of Species. The film, directed by Jon Amiel and starring real life couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly as Charles and Emma Darwin, is a somewhat fictionalised account based on Randal Keynes's Darwin biography Annie's Box.
WA Dangerous Method is a 2011 historical film directed by David Cronenberg and starring Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, and Vincent Cassel. The screenplay was adapted by writer Christopher Hampton from his 2002 stage play The Talking Cure, which was based on the 1993 non-fiction book by John Kerr, A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein.
WDr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet is a 1940 American biographical film directed by William Dieterle and starring Edward G. Robinson, based on the true story of the German doctor and scientist Dr. Paul Ehrlich. The film was released by Warner Bros., with some controversy considering the subject of syphilis in a major studio release. It was nominated for an Oscar for its original screenplay, but lost to The Great McGinty.
WEdison, the Man is a 1940 biographical film depicting the life of inventor Thomas Edison, who was played by Spencer Tracy. Hugo Butler and Dore Schary were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Story for their work on this film. However, much of the film's script fictionalizes or exaggerates the real events of Edison's life.
WEinstein is a 2008 Italian television miniseries written and directed by Liliana Cavani. The film is based on real life events of scientist Albert Einstein and it stars Vincenzo Amato in the title role.
WGalileo is a 1975 biographical film about the 16th and 17th century scientist Galileo Galilei, whose astronomical observations with the newly invented telescope led to a profound conflict with the Roman Catholic Church. The film is an adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's 1943 play of the same name. The film was produced by Ely Landau for the American Film Theatre, which presented thirteen film adaptations of plays in the United States from 1973 to 1975. Brecht's play was recently called a "masterpiece" by veteran theater critic Michael Billington, as Martin Esslin had in 1960. The film's director, Joseph Losey, had also directed the first performances of the play in 1947 in the US — with Brecht's active participation. The film is fairly true to those first performances, and is thus of historical significance as well.
WGiordano Bruno is a 1973 Italian biographical-drama film directed by Giuliano Montaldo. It was produced by Carlo Ponti.
WGorillas in the Mist is a 1988 American drama film directed by Michael Apted and starring Sigourney Weaver as the naturalist Dian Fossey. It tells the story of her work in Rwanda with mountain gorillas and was nominated for five Academy Awards.
WHidden Figures is a 2016 American biographical drama film directed by Theodore Melfi and written by Melfi and Allison Schroeder. It is loosely based on the 2016 non-fiction book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly about African American female mathematicians who worked at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) during the Space Race. The film stars Taraji P. Henson as Katherine Johnson, Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughan, and Janelle Monáe as Mary Jackson. Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Mahershala Ali, Aldis Hodge, and Glen Powell featured in supporting roles.
WInfinity is a 1996 American biographical drama film about the romantic life of physicist Richard Feynman. Feynman was played by Matthew Broderick, who also directed and produced the film. Broderick's mother, Patricia Broderick, wrote the screenplay, which was based on the books Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?, both written by Feynman and Ralph Leighton. It is the only film Broderick has ever directed.
WIvan Pavlov is a 1949 Soviet biopic directed by Grigori Roshal and starring Aleksandr Borisov, Nina Alisova and Nikolai Plotnikov. The film portrays the life of the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), known for his Pavlov's dog experiments. The film was made during the Stalinist era, despite the fact that Pavlov had been a noted opponent of the Soviet regime.
WJohannes Kepler is a 1974 East German historical drama film directed by Frank Vogel and starring Reimar J. Baur, Trude Bechmann and Kurt Böwe. It is a biopic of the German astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler.
WKinsey is a 2004 American biographical drama film written and directed by Bill Condon. It describes the life of Alfred Charles Kinsey, a pioneer in the area of sexology. His 1948 publication, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was one of the first recorded works that tried to scientifically address and investigate sexual behavior in humans. The film also stars Laura Linney, Chris O'Donnell, Peter Sarsgaard, Timothy Hutton, John Lithgow, Tim Curry, and Oliver Platt.
WLife Story is a 1987 television historical drama which depicts the progress toward, and the competition for, the discovery of the structure of DNA in the early 1950s.
WMarie Curie: The Courage of Knowledge is a 2016 internationally co-produced drama film directed by Marie Noëlle. It was screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival. It made its United States premiere at the New York Jewish Film Festival in 2017.
WMeasuring the World is a 2012 German / Austrian 3D film based on the eponymous novel by Daniel Kehlmann.
WNever Cry Wolf is a 1983 American drama film directed by Carroll Ballard. The film is an adaptation of Farley Mowat's 1963 autobiography of the same name and stars Charles Martin Smith as a government biologist sent into the wilderness to study the caribou population, whose decline is believed to be caused by wolves, even though no one has seen a wolf kill a caribou. The film also features Brian Dennehy and Zachary Ittimangnaq. It was the first Disney film to be released under the new Walt Disney Pictures label. The film was released on October 7, 1983 for a limited distribution, and in the regular theaters on January 27, 1984.
WNikolai Vavilov is a 1990 6-part biographical television film. Joint production of the USSR and East Germany. Biopic devoted to the history of the life of Soviet biologist, academician Nikolai Vavilov.
WOctober Sky is a 1999 American biographical drama film directed by Joe Johnston and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, Chris Owen, and Laura Dern. The screenplay by Lewis Colick, based on the memoir of the same name, tells the true story of Homer H. Hickam Jr., a coal miner's son who was inspired by the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957 to take up rocketry against his father's wishes and eventually became a NASA engineer.
WThe Odyssey is a 2016 French-Belgian biographical adventure film directed by Jérôme Salle and written by Salle and Laurent Turner, based on the non-fiction book Capitaine de La Calypso by Albert Falco and Yves Paccalet. The film stars Lambert Wilson, Pierre Niney, and Audrey Tautou.
WRadioactive is a 2019 British biographical drama film written by Jack Thorne, directed by Marjane Satrapi and starring Rosamund Pike as Marie Curie. The film is based on the 2010 graphic novel Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss.
WI ragazzi di via Panisperna is an Italian movie by director Gianni Amelio, telling the enthusiasms, fears, joys and disappointments of the life of a well-known group of young men fond of physics and mathematics, who just made history as the Via Panisperna boys.
WRobert Koch is a 1939 Nazi propaganda film directed by Hans Steinhoff and starring Emil Jannings, Werner Krauss and Viktoria von Ballasko. The film was a biopic of the German pioneering microbiologist Robert Koch (1843-1910). The film was made by the Terra Film company, and was also distributed in the United States by the largest German studio UFA.
WRocketry: The Nambi Effect is an upcoming Indian biographical drama film based on the life of Nambi Narayanan, a former scientist and aerospace engineer of the Indian Space Research Organisation who was accused of espionage. The film is written, produced and directed by Madhavan in his directorial debut, who also stars along with Simran.
WSalamander is a 1928 Soviet-German silent biopic film directed by Grigori Roshal and starring Bernhard Goetzke, Natalya Rozenel and Nikolay Khmelyov.
WThe Story of Louis Pasteur is a 1936 American black-and-white biographical film from Warner Bros., produced by Henry Blanke, directed by William Dieterle, that stars Josephine Hutchinson, Anita Louise and Donald Woods, and Paul Muni as the renowned scientist who developed major advances in microbiology, which revolutionized agriculture and medicine. The film's screenplay—which tells a highly fictionalized version of Pasteur’s life—was written by Pierre Collings and Sheridan Gibney, and Edward Chodorov (uncredited).
WTake Aim is a 1974 two-part Soviet historical drama film directed by Igor Talankin.
WTemple Grandin is a 2010 American biographical drama television film directed by Mick Jackson and starring Claire Danes as Temple Grandin, an autistic woman whose innovations revolutionized practices for the humane handling of livestock on cattle ranches and slaughterhouses. It is based on Grandin's memoirs Emergence and Thinking in Pictures.
WTesla is a 2020 American biographical drama film written and directed by Michael Almereyda. It stars Ethan Hawke as Nikola Tesla. Eve Hewson, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Jim Gaffigan, and Kyle MacLachlan also star.
WThe Theory of Everything is a 2014 biographical romantic drama film directed by James Marsh. Set at the University of Cambridge, it details the life of the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. It was adapted by Anthony McCarten from the 2007 memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen by Jane Hawking, which deals with her relationship with her ex-husband Stephen Hawking, his diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and his success in the field of physics. The film stars Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, with Charlie Cox, Emily Watson, Simon McBurney, Christian McKay, Harry Lloyd, and David Thewlis featured in supporting roles. The film had its world premiere at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival on 7 November 2014. It had its UK premiere on 1 January 2015.