Royal Society Prizes for Science Books

This is one of the 759 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
17163 Living With Risk the British Medical Association Board of Science 2003 British English
17163 Bones Of Contention Roger Lewin 1987 British English
8852 The Emperor's New Mind Roger Penrose 1989 British English
14985 Wonderful Life Stephen Jay Gould 1989 American English
5529 The Rise And Fall Of The Third Chimpanzee Jared Diamond 1991 American English
17163 The Making Of Memory Steven Rose 1992 British English
17163 The Language Of The Genes Steve Jones 1993 British English
17163 The Consumer's Good Chemical Guide John Emsley 1994 British English
17163 Plague's Progress Arno Karlen 1995 American English
17163 The Wisdom Of Bones Alan Walker, Pat Shipman 1996 American English
1384 Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond 1997 American English
7981 The Man Who Loved Only Numbers Paul Hoffman 1998 American English
3452 The Elegant Universe Brian Greene 1999 American English
17163 Mapping The Deep Robert Kunzig 2000 American English
17163 The Universe In A Nutshell Stephen Hawking 2001 British English
17163 Right Hand, Left Hand Chris McManus 2002 British English
8973 A Short History Of Nearly Everything Bill Bryson 2003 American English
7751 Critical Mass Philip Ball 2004 British English
17163 Electric Universe David Bodanis 2005 British English
6194 Stumbling On Happiness Daniel Gilbert 2006 American English
17163 Six Degrees Mark Lynas 2007 British English
7667 The Age Of Wonder Richard Holmes 2008 British English
17163 Life Ascending Nick Lane 2009 British English
17163 The Wavewatcher's Companion Gavin Pretor-Pinney 2010 British English
9700 The Information James Gleick 2011 American English
17163 The Particle At The End Of The Universe Sean Carroll 2012 American English
13214 Stuff Matters Mark Miodownik 2013 British English
17163 Adventures In The Anthropocene Gaia Vince 2014 British English
6596 The Invention Of Nature Andrea Wulf 2015 German English
17163 Testosterone Rex Cordelia Fine 2017 Australian English
17163 Inventing Ourselves Sarah-Jayne Blakemore 2018 British English
10875 Invisible Women Caroline Criado Perez​​ 2019 British English
17163 Explaining Humans Camilla Pang 2020 British English
5781 Entangled Life Merlin Sheldrake 2020 British English
17163 A (Very) Short History Of Life On Earth Henry Gee​ 2021 British English