Skip to main content

Authors - P

A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R-S-T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z


Ra Page

Stephanie Pain

Abraham Pais

Mark Pallen

Douglas Palmer

Richard Panek

Jason Parisi (with Justin Ball)

Michael Alan Park

Andew Parker

Matt Parker

Paul Parsons

William Patrick (with John Cacioppo)

Gregory S. Paul

Tony Peake

Fred Pearce

Iain Pears

George Pendle

Eliot Peper

Delia Perlov (with Alex Vilenkin)

John Perry (with Jack Challoner)

Peter Pesic

Sam Peters

Carolyn Collins Petersen

Andrew Petto (with Laurie Godfrey)

Patricia Pierce

Alexis Mari Pietak

Orrin Pilkey (with Rob Young)

Stephen Pincock

Adolfo Plasencia

Robert Plomin

Frederik Pohl (with Cyril Kornbluth)

John Polkinghorne

Henry Pollack

Justin Pollard

Roy Porter (with William Bynum)

William Poundstone

Emmanuelle Pouydebat (trans. Erik Butler)

Thomas Povey

Terry Pratchett (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen)

Tim Pratt

Diana Preston

Louisa Preston

Frans Pretorius (with Steven Gubser)

Christopher Priest

John Prior

Joel Primack (with Nancy Ellen Abrams)

Lawrence Principe

David Prothero

Donald Prothero

Oliver Pugh (with Brian Clegg)

Oliver Pugh (with Tom Whyntie)

Robert Michael Pyle

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Where are the chemistry popular science books?

by Brian Clegg
There has never been more emphasis on the importance of public engagement. We need both to encourage a deeper interest in science and to counter anti-scientific views that seem to go hand-in-hand with some types of politics. Getting the public interested in science both helps recruit new scientists of the future and spreads an understanding of why an area of scientific research deserves funding. Yet it is possible that chemistry lags behind the other sciences in outreach. As a science writer, and editor of this website, I believe that chemistry is under-represented in popular science. I'd like to establish if this is the case, if so why it is happening - and what can be done to change things. 


An easy straw poll is provided by the topic tags on the site. At the time of writing, there are 22 books under 'chemistry' as opposed to 97 maths, 126 biology and 182 physics. The distribution is inevitably influenced by editorial bias - but as the editor, I can confirm …
5 comments
Read more

Bloom - Ruth Kassinger ***

There is much fascinating material in this chunky book by Ruth Kassinger. It may be my total ignorance of biology and everyone else knows these things, but I learnt so much - for example that seaweed is algae and not a plant, about algae's role in the development of land plants, about the algae in lichen and its contribution to coral reefs.

The book is divided into four broad sections: on the origins and development of algae, on algae (and particularly seaweed) as food, on making use of algae, for example, for biofuel, and on algae and climate change, particularly the bleaching of coral and algal blooms. This is all done in a very approachable writing style, mixing descriptive material that is never over-technical with narrative often featuring visits to different locations and to talk to a range of experts from those who study to algae to those who cook them.

There are two problems though. Firstly, the book is too long at 380 pages. Each section could do with a trim, but this wa…
Post a Comment
Read more

Make, Think, Imagine - John Browne ***

When you read a politician's memoirs you know that, nine times out of ten, it won't really quite work, because the message can't carry a whole book. It's reminiscent of the old literary agent's cry of 'Is it a book, or is it an article?' It's not that there aren't a lot of words in such tomes. It's almost obligatory for these books to be quite chunky. But it's a fair amount of work getting through them, and you don't feel entirely satisfied afterwards. Unfortunately, that's rather how John Browne (former head of oil giant BP)'s book comes across.

It's not that the central thread is unimportant. It used to be the case, certainly in the UK, that science, with its roots in philosophy and the pursuit of knowledge, was considered far loftier than engineering, growing out of mechanical work and the pursuit of profit. There is, perhaps, still a whiff of this around in some circles - so Browne's message that engineering has been…
Post a Comment
Read more