BARONESS GREENFIELD
Director of the Royal Institution
My favourite science book is The Prehistory of the Mind by Steven
Mithen. It comes at the issue of what makes humans special from the stance
of an archaeologist. It's always nice to see a different discipline's
approach.
PROFESSOR DAVID BELLAMY
Britain's favourite botanist
My choice is Science and Music by Sir James Jeans. My dad took me to
see his house set among the orchid-rich Downs near Dorking. I read the book
- it made sense of science, but my mathematics was not up to it so I became
a botanist.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Creator of Discworld
I was lent The Origin of Species by a kind science master just before
I went down with flu, so I read it in a state of delirium. But despite, or
maybe because of this, it all made sense. It fitted what I saw around me and
the story was considerably more believable than Genesis.
BILL BRYSON
Bestselling author of A Short History of Nearly Everything
Cosmos by Carl Sagan because it is solid and reliable as scientific
reporting, but shot through with a genuine sense of wonder and excitement.
Most science books offer either authority or awe, but this gives both.
PROFESSOR LISA JARDINE
Historian and Chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority
James Watson's The Double Helix is the story of Crick and Watson's
discovery of the helical structure of DNA in 1953. It is guaranteed to make
every clever young person want to be a scientist!
SIR PATRICK MOORE
Astronomer and author
The science fiction novel Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon is
immensely thought-provoking and I've read it time and time again.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Sci-fi and fantasy visionary
The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner: watching two gently obsessive
biologists watch finches in the Galapagos for 20 years gives an exhilarating
sense of the nobility of pure science and the endless revelatory power of
Darwin's theory of evolution.
PHILIP PULLMAN
Bestselling children's author
John Carey's Faber Book of Science, simply because everything is
there, and very well organised.
PROFESSOR PHILIP DIAMOND
Director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics
I first read Foundation by Isaac Asimov as a teenager and was
fascinated by its scale - a Galactic-wide war instigated by a megalomaniac;
the development of “psychohistory”; aiming to use statistical prediction of
humanity's actions to develop a plan to survive the impending Dark Ages.
WILLIAM BOYD
Award-winning novelist
The Chimpanzees of Gombe by Jane Goodall is the product of a lifetime's
astonishing, painstaking and revolutionary research. This book finally
reveals the complex society of our closest cousins, wild chimpanzees. Wholly
fascinating, absorbing and surprisingly moving.
AMIR ACZEL
Author of the mathematical bestseller Fermat's Last Theorem
One of the best science books of all time is Roger Penrose's The Road to
Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe. Professor Penrose
should be applauded for writing this 1099-page book that truly explains
modern physics, mathematics, and the intricate relationship between the two,
at a highly intelligent yet very accessible level--this is something that
only Penrose, both an eminent scientist and one with incredible skills of
exposition, could achieve.
PROFESSOR PETER ATKINS
Leading English chemist
The Extended Phenotype by Richard Dawkins. One of the least known and
most technical of Richard Dawkins' books, but eye-opening in its range and
the imaginative explorations of a simple but far-reaching idea.
PIERS BIZONY
Science and space writer
James Gleick's Chaos: Making a New Science; a brilliantly accessible
and genuinely thrilling look at how fractals influence every aspect of life,
from the growth of leaves to the ups and downs of stock market prices. There
are even hidden patterns inside what we would think of as the 'random' hiss
of static on a phone line.
DR PHILIPPA BROWNING
Solar physicist
I would nominate Flatland by Edwin Abbott. It’s a long time since I
read it, but it made a big impact on me when I read it as a child and helped
influence me to become a mathematician and astrophysicist. It’s a great
read, which introduces some advanced concepts in mathematics and physics -
the idea of dimensions beyond the obvious three - while also making the
reader think about things like prejudice, perception and social conventions.
It’s also an enjoyable, rather surreal adventure story.
ALAIN DE BOTTON
Philosopher of everyday life
My favourite science book is Of a Fire on the Moon by Norman Mailer.
Mailer spent a year studying the NASA space programme that led to the first
moon landings and his book is a riveting study of the mentality of rocket
scientists, astronauts and the scientific community more generally. He
brings out the beauty, but also the horror (and even fascism) lurking
beneath this great achievement.
PROFESSOR JOHN BURN
Medical Director at Newcastle University
From childhood, The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle. Most recently I found
Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything a delight!
PROFESSOR DAVID CRYSTAL
Linguist
I guess, thinking back, it would have be Peter Medawar's The Art of the
Soluble. This came out at a time when I was trying to work out in my
mind whether linguistics was an art or a science - and then, thanks to him,
realised I was asking the wrong question.
PROFESSOR FILIPE FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO
Historian
I belong to the scientifically lost generation that started science at twelve
years old and gave it up at fourteen. So Joseph Needham's Science and
Civilisation in China re-awakened my interest and inaugurated my adult
self-education in the sciences, as well as revolutionising my understanding
of the history of the world.
PROFESSOR JOHN GRIBBEN
Consultant Haematologist and Medical Oncologist
This changes all the time, but at present my vote would go to Cosm by
Gregory Benford. It's good old fashioned "hard Sf," with real
science that is directly relevant to what is happening at the Large Hadron
Collider this year!
MARK HENDERSON
Science Editor of The Times
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. This book will change the way
you think about science and history, proposing a compelling theory that
geography and ecology can explain the rise and fall of civilisations,
migrations and conquests.
RICHARD HOLLOWAY
Scottish writer and broadcaster
David Suzuki & Peter Knudston’s Genethics. It helped me in
my scientifically illiterate way to get my head round genetics. “A gene is
life's way of remembering how to perpetuate itself. That memory is
chemical”. Eureka, I thought, I can understand that.
DR KRISTIN LIPPINCOTT
Former Director of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich
I am always looking for books that provide bridges between the arts,
humanities and sciences. The Existential Pleasure of Engineering by
Samuel C. Florman is a gem: learned, witty, wise, great fun to read – and
full of useful quotes from a wide variety of authors just aching to be
re-used.
ROSHEEN MCCOOL
Fibre optic engineer
My favourite science fiction book is The Stars My Destination by
Alfred Bester. I love it because it is a gripping story of revenge, with
elements of The Count of Monte Cristo in it. Bester describes a future world
that is vivid and plausible despite the fantastic nature of the characters,
their situations and surroundings. I think it’s incredible that it was first
published in 1956, as it does not appear to have dated a day.
PAUL PARSONS
Author of The Science of Dr Who
One that always stays with me is Ian Stewart’s Does God Play Dice.
I read it when I was a student and it laid bare the tricky subject of chaos
theory so clearly but at the same time conveyed so much of the technical
detail – everything a popular science book should do
MEG ROSOFF
Award-winning children's author
My favourite science book has to be Kon Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl and
F.H.Lyon. In it, Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl builds a raft of balsa wood and
sets out with a crew of five to cross the Pacific Ocean, hoping to prove his
hypotheses that the Polynesian Islands may have been settled by South
Americans travelling west rather than (as was commonly assumed) Asians
travelling east. The joy of the book lies in the vivid description of his
hundred days spent on a primitive raft, hundreds of miles from shore, just a
few inches above the water. Thirty years after reading it (admittedly
hundreds of times), I can still vividly recall Heyerdahl's descriptions of
visitations by strange and magical sea life, and the terror of weathering
storms on the tiny craft.
DAVA SOBEL
Author of the bestselling Longitude
I will recommend a beautifully expressed classic in the field, Rachel
Carson's Silent Spring. This was a book true to itself and powerful
enough to change the world. It awakened an unaware public to the dangers of
pollution.
DR SIMON SINGH
Author and physicist
Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman! by Richard Feynman. I read about
Feynman's extraordinary scientific and personal adventures when I was a
teenager, and it helped fuel my love of physics.
TIM SMIT
Chief Executive of the Eden Project
The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker. This is a great book about the
power of language. It blows your mind!
LEWIS SMITH
Environment Editor of The Times
The Velvet Claw by David Macdonald. It’s a fascinating read about the
evolution of the carnivore and the variety of forms they have taken.
PROFESSOR IAN STEWART
Professor of Mathematics at Warwick University
My favourite science read is Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach.
It's a highly original examination of self-referential structures in
science, mathematics, art, and music, including dialogues between Achilles
and the tortoise, and there is nothing else that is remotely like it.
LISA TUTTLE
Science-fiction author, and critic for The Times
Mother Nature: Natural Selection & the Female of the Species by
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. A fascinating study of the evolution of motherhood, and
the effects of maternal behaviour on evolution.
SARA WHEELER
Travel writer
Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth
Century by John McNeill. This brilliant, deeply challenging book calmly
unfolds the biological consequences of cheap energy and spectacular
population growth in the era – which one chemist has called the anthropocene
– in which more and more people acquire greater and greater leverage over
the environment. What a piece of work is a man . . .
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Acclaimed novelist
Anything and everything by Michio Kaku, Steven Pinker or James Lovelock. All
very different thinkers and writers, but each lights up the world, the
universe, the brain.
PROFESSOR LEWIS WOLPERT
Developmental biologist, author and broadcaster
V.S.Ramachandran’s Phantoms in the Brain. A wonderful and
startling account of brain function and its abnormalities.
