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Sid Watkins (1928-2012)

Birthplace:
Liverpool, United Kingdom

Born:
September 6, 1928

Died:
September 12, 2012

Biography from TheMovieDB

Professor Sid Watkins (September 6, 1928 – September 12, 2012) was a renowned British neurosurgeon and pioneering medical advisor in Formula 1, credited with revolutionizing the sport’s approach to driver safety. Born in Liverpool, England, Watkins trained as a neurosurgeon and became one of the most respected doctors in his field. In 1978, he was appointed as Formula 1’s Chief Medical Officer, where he began implementing critical safety improvements.  Watkins advocated for and introduced numerous life-saving practices, including on-site medical teams, improved medical facilities at tracks, and the deployment of rapid-response vehicles. His friendship with drivers like Ayrton Senna and Niki Lauda was well-known, and he was often the first on the scene to assist injured drivers. Watkins’ efforts helped save lives and led to the creation of the FIA Institute for Motor Sport Safety, where he served as chairman.  Watkins’ legacy is monumental in motorsport safety, transforming Formula 1 into a much safer sport. His contributions are widely respected, and he is remembered as the “Guardian Angel” of Formula 1 drivers, with his work continuing to protect lives even after his passing in 2012.

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Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).

Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

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Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)

While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:

  • I added "runners up" to Top 10 lists, treating them as ties where applicable and numbering them accordingly at the bottom of each list.
  • Regarding those polls wherein "franchise" movies were submitted as one project until BFI's policy changed to regard them separately, I treated them as ties and renumbered the affected lists accordingly (e.g. the Godfather films).

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Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).

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Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.