Skip to main content

Royal Society Winton Prize 2015

MThe  books listed for the 2015 Royal Society Winton Prize, arguably a summary of the best popular science books published in 2014.

Winner


  • Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet we Made by Gaia Vince

The judges said: “Vince’s passion and strong voice grabs you instantly and the story she tells is truly original. A finely-crafted book on an important, urgent topic.”

Shortlist

  • The Man Who Couldn't Stop by David Adam
The judges said: “An amazingly gripping and informative look inside someone’s head, told with a depth of knowledge and genius turn of phrase that only an expert and gifted writer could wield.”
  • Alex Through the Looking-Glass: How Life Reflects Numbers and Numbers Reflect Life by Alex Belos
The judges said: “Bellos fizzes with enthusiasm, and his genuine love for the subject shines through and makes mathematics engaging and non-threatening even for math-phobes.”
  • Smashing Physics: Inside the World's Biggest Experiment by John Butterworth
The judges said: “With his unique insider perspective, Butterworth has humanized a classic science story that we all thought we knew. His writing is so engaging that he makes some of the most advanced science around seem within our grasp.”
  • Life's Greatest Secret: The Story of the Race to Crack the Genetic Code by Matthew Cobb
The judges said: “A brilliantly written account of one of the most important scientific discoveries of the century, with a fresh perspective that also dispels the myths popularised by previous reports.”
  • Life on the Edge: The Coming Age of Quantum Biology by Johnjoe Mcfadden and Jim Al-Khalili
The judges said: “A topic that could have been incomprehensible to the average reader becomes unexpectedly enthralling in the hands of these skilled communicators. A controversial work that deserves its already wide audience.”

Longlist

Bizarrely, there was no longlist this year.

and here are our favourites that didn’t make the long list, but should have:

Judges

Award-winning author Sarah Waters is one of six judges chaired by mathematician and Royal Society Fellow Ian Stewart, widely known for the Science of Discworld series, which he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett and Jack Cohen.

They are joined by: Channel 4 anchor Krishnan Guru-Murthy, science journalist and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Inside Science Dr Adam Rutherford, electrical engineer Dr Jo Shien Ng and Guardian Books Editor Claire Armitstead.

 The Prize has worked with many eminent judges over its illustrious 28-year history, among them Ian McEwan, Terry Pratchett, Brian Cox, David Attenborough, Tracy Chevalier and Michael Frayn.

 Founded in 1988, (and previously known under various banners including the Royal Society Prize for Science Books, Aventis Prize and Rhône-Poulenc Prize), the Prize celebrates outstanding popular science books from around the world and is open to authors of science books written for a non-specialist audience. Over the decades it has championed writers such as Stephen Hawking, Jared Diamond, Stephen Jay Gould and Bill Bryson.

 Sarah Waters said: “Although I was very interested in science as a child, I've been more at home, as an adult, with literature and theatre. So I'm not a traditional science buff by any means, but fundamentally I'm still interested in how things work, in systems and in processes, and I’m keen to reconnect with that. I am awed by the range of knowledge that is being brought to the table by my fellow judges, and I'm looking forward to what's sure to be a lively judging process. The great thing about this Prize is that it celebrates accessibility as well as expertise, and I think my novelist's perspective will be a very useful one.”

 Judge Adam Rutherford added: “Last year marked the first time a scientist joined the Man Booker judging panel, but by comparison, this Prize has a long history of inviting expertise from non-scientists. This panel has been assembled by The Royal Society precisely because we’ve all got different interests and talents – a sort of hybrid of the Bloomsbury Set and The Avengers. These books are for everyone, and it's important that we judge not just the science but also the quality, clarity and beauty of the writing.”

 Chair of judges Ian Stewart said: “I’m honoured to have been chosen to chair the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books judging panel. The Prize is a marvellous way to recognise the achievements of authors who write about science for the general public, as well as emphasise the importance of public engagement with science.”
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Antigravity Enigma - Andrew May ****

Antigravity - the ability to overcome the pull of gravity - has been a fantasy for thousands of years and subject to more scientific (if impractical) fictional representation since H. G. Wells came up with cavorite in The First Men in the Moon . But is it plausible scientifically?  Andrew May does a good job of pulling together three ways of looking at our love affair with antigravity (and the related concept of cancelling inertia) - in science fiction, in physics and in pseudoscience and crankery. As May points out, science fiction is an important starting point as the concept was deployed there well before we had a good enough understanding of gravity to make any sensible scientific stabs at the idea (even though, for instance, Michael Faraday did unsuccessfully experiment with a possible interaction between gravity and electromagnetism). We then get onto the science itself, noting the potential impact on any ideas of antigravity that come from the move from a Newtonian view of a...
Post a Comment
Read more

The World as We Know It - Peter Dear ***

History professor Peter Dear gives us a detailed and reasoned coverage of the development of science as a concept from its origins as natural philosophy, covering the years from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. inclusive If that sounds a little dry, frankly, it is. But if you don't mind a very academic approach, it is certainly interesting. Obviously a major theme running through is the move from largely gentleman natural philosophers (with both implications of that word 'gentleman') to professional academic scientists. What started with clubs for relatively well off men with an interest, when universities did not stray far beyond what was included in mathematics (astronomy, for instance), would become a very different beast. The main scientific subjects that Dear covers are physics and biology - we get, for instance, a lot on the gradual move away from a purely mechanical views of physics - the reason Newton's 'action at a distance' gravity caused such ...
Post a Comment
Read more

It's On You - Nick Chater and George Loewenstein *****

Going on the cover you might think this was a political polemic - and admittedly there's an element of that - but the reason it's so good is quite different. It shows how behavioural economics and social psychology have led us astray by putting the focus way too much on individuals. A particular target is the concept of nudges which (as described in Brainjacking ) have been hugely over-rated. But overall the key problem ties to another psychological concept: framing. Huge kudos to both Nick Chater and George Loewenstein - a behavioural scientist and an economics and psychology professor - for having the guts to take on the flaws in their own earlier work and that of colleagues, because they make clear just how limited and potentially dangerous is the belief that individuals changing their behaviour can solve large-scale problems. The main thesis of the book is that there are two ways to approach the major problems we face - an 'i-frame' where we focus on the individual ...
Post a Comment
Read more