Royal Society Science Book Prize

The Royal Society Science Book Prize is an annual £25,000 prize awarded by the Royal Society to celebrate outstanding popular science books from around the world.^[1] It is open to authors of science books written for a non-specialist audience, and since it was established in 1988 has championed writers such as Stephen Hawking, Jared Diamond, Stephen Jay Gould and Bill Bryson. In 2015 The Guardian described the prize as "the most prestigious science book prize in Britain".^[2]

History

The Royal Society established the Science Books Prize in 1988 with the aim of encouraging the writing, publishing and reading of good and accessible popular science books. Its name has varied according to sponsorship agreements.

Years	Name	Sponsor
1990 – 2000	Rhône-Poulenc Prize for Science Books	Rhône-Poulenc
2001 – 2006	Aventis Prize for Science Books	Aventis
2007 – 2010	Royal Society Prize for Science Books	none
2011 – 2015	Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books	Winton Group
2016 – 2022	Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize	Insight Investment[3]
2023 –	Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize	Trivedi Foundation

Judging process

A panel of judges decides the shortlist and the winner of the Prize each year. The panel is chaired by a fellow of the Royal Society and includes authors, scientists and media personalities. The judges for the 2016 prize included author Bill Bryson, theoretical physicist Dr Clare Burrage, science fiction author Alastair Reynolds, ornithologist and science blogger GrrlScientist, and author and director of external affairs at the Science Museum Group, Roger Highfield.^[3] In 2019, the jury consisted of Sir Nigel Shadbolt, Shukry James Habib, Dorothy Koomson, Stephen McGann, and Gwyneth Williams.^[4]

All books entered for the prize must be published in English for the first time between September and October the preceding year. The winner is announced at an award ceremony and receives £25,000. Each of the other shortlisted authors receives £2,500.^[1]

Shortlisted books

Before 2000

Royal Society Prizes for Science Books winners, 1988-2000^[5]

Year	Author	Title	Result
1988	British Medical Association Board of Science	Living with Risk	Winner
1989	Roger Lewin	Bones of Contention: Controversies in the Search for Human Origins	Winner
1990	Roger Penrose	The Emperor's New Mind	Winner
1991	Stephen Jay Gould	Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History	Winner
1992	Jared Diamond	The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee	Winner[6]
1993	Steven Rose	The Making of Memory	Winner
1994	Steve Jones	The Language of the Genes	Winner
1995	John Emsley	The Consumer’s Good Chemical Guide	Winner
1996	Arno Karlen	Plague's Progress	Winner
1997	Alan Walker and Pat Shipman	The Wisdom of Bones	Winner
1998	Jared Diamond	Guns, Germs, and Steel	Winner[6]
1999	Paul Hoffman	The Man Who Loved Only Numbers	Winner

2000s

Royal Society Prizes for Science Books winners, 2000-2009^[5]

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
2000	Brian Greene	The Elegant Universe	Winner
	Thomas Dormandy	The White Death	Finalist
	John Naughton	A Brief History of the Future
	Matt Ridley	Genome
	Jonathan Weiner	Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior
	Christopher Wills	Children of Prometheus
2001	Robert Kunzig	Mapping the Deep	Winner
	Steve Grand	Creation: Life and How to Make It	Finalist
	George Johnson	Strange Beauty
	Mark Ridley	Mendel's Demon
	Paul Strathern	Mendeleyev's Dream
	Lewis Wolpert	Malignant Sadness
2002	Stephen Hawking	The Universe in a Nutshell	Winner	[7]
	Martin Gorst	Aeons:The Search for the Beginning of Time	Finalist
	Hannah Holmes	The Secret Life of Dust
	David Horrobin	The Madness of Adam and Eve: Did Schizophrenia Shape Humanity?
	Robert M. Sapolsky	A Primate's Memoir
	Michael White	Rivals: Conflict as the Fuel of Science
2003	Chris McManus	Right Hand, Left Hand	Winner
	Mark Buchanan	Small World	Finalist
	Gerd Gigerenzer	Reckoning With Risk
	Robert P. Kirshner	The Extravagant Universe
	Steven Pinker	The Blank Slate
	Stephen Webb	Where Is Everybody?
2004	Bill Bryson	A Short History of Nearly Everything	Winner	[8]
	Andrew Brown	In The Beginning Was the Worm	Finalist
	Nigel Calder	Magic Universe
	Armand Marie Leroi	Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body
	Sue Nelson and Richard Hollingham	How to Clone the Perfect Blonde
	Matt Ridley	Nature Via Nurture
	Francis Spufford	Backroom Boys
2005	Philip Ball	Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another	Winner
	Richard Dawkins	The Ancestor's Tale	Finalist
	Douwe Draaisma	Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older
	Griffith Edwards	Matters Of Substance: Drugs - And Why Everyone's A User
	Richard Fortey	The Earth: An Intimate History
	Robert Winston	The Human Mind
2006	David Bodanis	Electric Universe: How Electricity Switched on the Modern World	Winner	[9]
	Jared Diamond	Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed^	Finalist	[6]
	Michio Kaku	Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and our Future in the Cosmos
	Nick Lane	Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life
	Arthur I. Miller	Empire of the Stars: Friendship, Obsession and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes
	Vivienne Parry	The Truth About Hormones: What's Going on when We're Tetchy, Spotty, Fearful, Tearful or Just Plain Awful
2007^	Daniel Gilbert	Stumbling on Happiness	Winner	[10]
	Robert Henson	The Rough Guide to Climate Change	Finalist
	Eric R. Kandel	In Search of Memory
	Henry Nicholls	Lonesome George
	Chris Stringer	Homo Britannicus
	Adam Wishart	One in Three
2008	Mark Lynas	Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet	Winner	[11]
	Stuart Clark	The Sun Kings: The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began	Finalist
	Gerd Gigerenzer	Gut Feelings
	Steve Jones	Coral: A Pessimist in Paradise
	Ian Stewart	Why Beauty is Truth: A History of Symmetry
	J. Craig Venter	A Life Decoded, My Genome: My Life
2009	Richard Holmes	The Age of Wonder	Winner	[12]
	Avery Gilbert	What the Nose Knows	Finalist	[12][13]
	Ben Goldacre	Bad Science		[12][13]
	Jo Marchant	Decoding the Heavens		[12][13]
	Leonard Mlodinow	The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives		[12][13]
	Neil Shubin	Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body		[12][13]
2010	Nick Lane	Life Ascending	Winner	[14][15]
	Marcus Chown	We Need To Talk About Kelvin	Finalist	[16]
	Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw	Why Does E=mc2?		[17]
	Frederick Grinnell	Everyday Practice of Science: Where Intuition and Passion Meet Objectivity and Logic		[18]
	James Hannam	God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science		[19]
	Henry Pollack	A World Without Ice		[20]

2010s

Royal Society Prizes for Science Books winners, 2010-2019^[5]

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
2011	Gavin Pretor-Pinney	The Wavewatcher's Companion	Winner	[21]
	Alex Bellos	Alex's Adventures in Numberland	Finalist	[22]
	Guy Deutscher	Through the Language Glass: How Words Colour Your World		[23]
	Sam Kean	The Disappearing Spoon
	Ian Sample	Massive: The Missing Particle That Sparked the Greatest Hunt in Science		[24]
	Jon Turney	The Rough Guide to The Future		[25]
2012	James Gleick	The Information	Winner	[26][27]
	Joshua Foer	Moonwalking with Einstein	Finalist	[28]
	Lone Frank	My Beautiful Genome		[29]
	Brian Greene	The Hidden Reality		[30]
	Steven Pinker	The Better Angels of Our Nature
	Nathan Wolfe	The Viral Storm		[31]
2013	Sean Carroll	The Particle at the End of the Universe	Winner	[32][33]
	Tim Birkhead	Bird Sense	Finalist	[34][35]
	Enrico Coen	Cells to Civilizations: The Principles of Change That Shape Life		[36][35]
	Charles Fernyhough	Pieces of Light: The New Science of Memory		[35]
	Caspar Henderson	The Book of Barely Imagined Beings		[37][35]
	Callum Roberts	Ocean of Life		[38][35]
2014	Mark Miodownik	Stuff Matters: The Strange Stories of the Marvellous Materials that Shape Our Man-made World	Winner	[39]
	Philip Ball	Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler	Finalist	[40][41]
	John Browne	Seven Elements That Have Changed The World: Iron, Carbon, Gold, Silver, Uranium, Titanium, Silicon		[42][41]
	Pedro G. Ferreira	The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle over General Relativity		[43][41]
	George Johnson	The Cancer Chronicles: Unlocking Medicine's Deepest Mystery		[41]
	Mary Roach	Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal		[44][41]
2015	Gaia Vince	Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made	Winner	[2][45]
	David Adam	The Man Who Couldn’t Stop	Finalist	[46]
	Alex Bellos	Alex Through the Looking-Glass: How Life Reflects Numbers and Numbers Reflect Life
	Jon Butterworth	Smashing Physics
	Matthew Cobb	Life's Greatest Secret
	Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili	Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology
2016	Andrea Wulf	The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science	Winner	[47][48]
	Tim Birkhead	The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird's Egg	Finalist	[49]
	Thomas Levenson	The Hunt for Vulcan: ... and How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe
	Jo Marchant	Cure: A Journey Into the Science of Mind over Body
	Oliver Morton	The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World
	Siddhartha Mukherjee	The Gene: An Intimate History
2017	Cordelia Fine	Testosterone Rex: Unmaking the Myths of Our Gendered Minds	Winner	[50][51]
	Eugenia Cheng	Beyond Infinity: An Expedition to the Outer Limits of the Mathematical Universe	Finalist	[52]
	Peter Godfrey-Smith	Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life
	Joseph Jebelli	In Pursuit of Memory: The Fight Against Alzheimer's
	Mark O'Connell	To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death
	Ed Yong	I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
2018	Sarah-Jayne Blakemore	Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain	Winner	[53][54]
	Lucy Cooke	The Unexpected Truth About Animals	Finalist	[55]
	Daniel M. Davis	The Beautiful Cure: Harnessing Your Body’s Natural Defences
	Hannah Fry	Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine
	Mark Miodownik	Liquid: The Delightful and Dangerous Substances That Flow Through Our Lives
	Simon Winchester	Exactly: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
2019	Caroline Criado Perez	Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men	Winner	[56][57][58]
	John Gribbin	Six Impossible Things	Finalist	[59]
	Monty Lyman	The Remarkable Life of the Skin
	Tim Smedley	Clearing the Air
	Paul Steinhardt	The Second Kind of Impossible
	Steven Strogatz	Infinite Powers

2020s

Royal Society Prizes for Science Books winners, 2020-present^[5]

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
2020	Camilla Pang	Explaining Humans	Winner	[60][61][62]
	Jim Al-Khalili	The World According to Physics	Finalist	[63]
	Bill Bryson	The Body: A Guide for Occupants
	Susannah Cahalan	The Great Pretender
	Linda Scott	The Double X Economy
	Gaia Vince	Transcendence
2021	Merlin Sheldrake	Entangled Life	Winner	[64][65]
	Emily Levesque	The Last Stargazers	Finalist
	James Nestor	Breath
	Jessica Nordell	The End of Bias
	Suzanne O'Sullivan	The Sleeping Beauties
	Stuart J. Ritchie	Science Fictions
2022	Henry Gee	A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters	Winner	[66][67]
	Nick Davidson	The Greywacke: How a Priest, a Soldier and a School Teacher Uncovered 300 Million Years of History	Finalist	[68][69]
	Frans de Waal	Different: What Apes Can Teach Us About Gender
	Jeremy Farrar with Anjana Ahuja	Spike: The Virus vs. The People – the Inside Story
	Rose Anne Kenny	Age Proof: The New Science of Living a Longer and Healthier Life
	Peter Stott	Hot Air: The Inside Story of the Battle Against Climate Change Denial
2023	Ed Yong	An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us	Winner	[70]
	Roma Agrawal	Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (in a Big Way)	Finalist	[71]
	Nicklas Brendborg, trans. by Elizabeth de Noma	Jellyfish Age Backwards: Nature's Secrets to Longevity
	Lev Parikian	Taking Flight: The Evolutionary Story of Life on the Wing
	David Quammen	Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus
	Kate Zernike	The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science
2024	Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith	A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?	Winner	[72]
	Cat Bohannon	Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution	Finalist	[73]
	Tom Chivers	Everything Is Predictable: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World
	Kashmir Hill	Your Face Belongs to Us: The Secretive Startup Dismantling Your Privacy
	Gísli Pálsson	The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction
	Venki Ramakrishnan	Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality