Did you know that pi has inspired a literary subgenre; the piem, in which the number of letters per word is determined by pi? Or that crochet helped glean insights into a counterintuitive type of geometry? Did you ever believe the rumour that mathematics could be playful, or even beautiful?
Nick Lane’s Life Ascending has won the annual Royal Society Book Prize, beating the other shortlisted titles to a £10,000 reward. His book is eloquent and elegant, guiding the reader through the authors’ chosen top ten great inventions of evolution.
Lane joins a list of accomplished authors, including Steve Jones, Steven Rose and Bill Bryson in winning the prize.
Far from their reputation as ‘dark’, the Middle Ages were a period of huge technological and cultural advance. So argues James Hannam in his vivid depiction of the 11th to 17th centuries.
God’s Philosophers condenses six hundred years of history and brings to life the key players who pushed forward philosophy and reason.
Ruth Francis, Nature’s Head of Press, is reviewing all the entries shortlisted for the Royal Society’s science book prize. She’ll be reading one per week and posting her thoughts on The Great Beyond every Friday between now and the prize ceremony on 21 October. A World Without Ice should, more precisely, be renamed a history of a world full of ice. Pollack leads us through centuries of Arctic and Antarctic exploration, informing us about the movements of ice and continents long ago. As with the best science writing, he uses stories to draw readers into the science, occasionally including observations … Read more
Ruth Francis, Nature’s Head of Press, is reviewing all the entries shortlisted for the Royal Society’s science book prize. She’ll be reading one per week and posting her thoughts on The Great Beyond every Friday between now and the prize ceremony on 21 October. Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time is a work of fiction that features an awful lot of complicated mathematics. Understanding the maths isn’t crucial in enjoying the book, fortunately, and it was a runaway hit back in 2003. Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw pull off a similar trick in their … Read more
Ruth Francis, Nature’s Head of Press, is reviewing all the entries shortlisted for the Royal Society’s science book prize. She’ll be reading one per week and posting her thoughts on The Great Beyond every Friday between now and the prize ceremony on 21 October.
Ruth Francis, Nature’s Head of Press, is reviewing all the entries shortlisted for the Royal Society’s science book prize. She’ll be reading one per week and is posting her thoughts on The Great Beyond every Friday between now and the prize ceremony on 21 October.
Ruth’s Reviews: Life Ascending – Nick Lane
Ruth Francis, Nature’s Head of Press, is reviewing all the entries shortlisted for the Royal Society’s science book prize. She’ll be reading one per week and we are posting her thoughts on The Great Beyond every Friday between now and the prize ceremony on 21 October.
Ruth’s Reviews: We need to talk about Kelvin – Marcus Chown
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