Royal Society Prizes for Science Books

This is one of the 743 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

The Royal Society, 35 Books

The Royal Society Science Books Prize is an annual £25,000 prize awarded by the Royal Society to celebrate outstanding popular science books from around the world. 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".

This list is a yearly book award, and was added to this site over 2 years ago.

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Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
17010 Living With Risk the British Medical Association Board of Science 2003 British English
17010 Bones Of Contention Roger Lewin 1987 British English
8836 The Emperor's New Mind Roger Penrose 1989 British English
14901 Wonderful Life Stephen Jay Gould 1989 American English
5520 The Rise And Fall Of The Third Chimpanzee Jared Diamond 1991 American English
17010 The Making Of Memory Steven Rose 1992 British English
17010 The Language Of The Genes Steve Jones 1993 British English
17010 The Consumer's Good Chemical Guide John Emsley 1994 British English
17010 Plague's Progress Arno Karlen 1995 American English
17010 The Wisdom Of Bones Alan Walker, Pat Shipman 1996 American English
1383 Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond 1997 American English
7966 The Man Who Loved Only Numbers Paul Hoffman 1998 American English
3446 The Elegant Universe Brian Greene 1999 American English
17010 Mapping The Deep Robert Kunzig 2000 American English
17010 The Universe In A Nutshell Stephen Hawking 2001 British English
17010 Right Hand, Left Hand Chris McManus 2002 British English
8957 A Short History Of Nearly Everything Bill Bryson 2003 American English
7734 Critical Mass Philip Ball 2004 British English
17010 Electric Universe David Bodanis 2005 British English
6182 Stumbling On Happiness Daniel Gilbert 2006 American English
17010 Six Degrees Mark Lynas 2007 British English
7651 The Age Of Wonder Richard Holmes 2008 British English
17010 Life Ascending Nick Lane 2009 British English
17010 The Wavewatcher's Companion Gavin Pretor-Pinney 2010 British English
9679 The Information James Gleick 2011 American English
17010 The Particle At The End Of The Universe Sean Carroll 2012 American English
13181 Stuff Matters Mark Miodownik 2013 British English
17010 Adventures In The Anthropocene Gaia Vince 2014 British English
6582 The Invention Of Nature Andrea Wulf 2015 German English
17010 Testosterone Rex Cordelia Fine 2017 Australian English
17010 Inventing Ourselves Sarah-Jayne Blakemore 2018 British English
10843 Invisible Women Caroline Criado Perez​​ 2019 British English
17010 Explaining Humans Camilla Pang 2020 British English
5769 Entangled Life Merlin Sheldrake 2020 British English
17010 A (Very) Short History Of Life On Earth Henry Gee​ 2021 British English