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 Laws of Thought - Tom Griffiths *****

In giving us a history of attempts to explain our thinking abilities, Tom Griffiths demonstrates an excellent ability to pitch information just right for the informed general reader.  We begin with Aristotelian logic and the way Boole and others transformed it into a kind of arithmetic before a first introduction of computing and theories of language. Griffiths covers a surprising amount of ground - we don't just get, for instance, the obvious figures of Turing, von Neumann and Shannon, but the interaction between the computing pioneers and those concerned with trying to understand the way we think - for example in the work of Jerome Bruner, of whom I confess I'd never heard.  This would prove to be the case with a whole host of people who have made interesting contributions to the understanding of human thought processes. Sometimes their theories were contradictory - this isn't an easy field to successfully observe - but always they were interesting. But for me, at least, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum ****

This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a series of paradoxes. However, I need to say up front that I'm giving it four stars for the ideas: unfortunately the writing is not great. It reads more like a government report than anything vaguely readable - it really should have co-authored with a professional writer to make it accessible. Even so, I'm recommending it: like some government reports it's significant enough to make it necessary to wade through the bureaucrat speak. Why paradoxes? Dignum identifies two ways we can think about paradoxes (oddly I wrote about paradoxes recently , but with three definitions): a logical paradox such as 'this statement is false', or a paradoxical truth such as 'less is more' - the second of which seems a better to fit to the use here.  We are then presented with eight paradoxes, each of which gives some insights into aspects of t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Einstein's Fridge - Paul Sen ****

In Einstein's Fridge (interesting factoid: this is at least the third popular science book to be named after Einstein's not particularly exciting refrigerator), Paul Sen has taken on a scary challenge. As Jim Al-Khalili made clear in his excellent The World According to Physics , our physical understanding of reality rests on three pillars: relativity, quantum theory and thermodynamics. But there is no doubt that the third of these, the topic of Sen's book, is a hard sell. While it's true that these are the three pillars of physics, from the point of view of making interesting popular science, the first two might be considered pillars of gold and platinum, while the third is a pillar of salt. Relativity and quantum theory are very much of the twentieth century. They are exciting and sometimes downright weird and wonderful. Thermodynamics, by contrast, has a very Victorian feel and, well, is uninspiring. Luckily, though, thermodynamics is important enough, lying behind ...
Post a Comment
Read more