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The prestigious prize aims to “celebrate the best in popular science writing from around the globe”.
Last year I bemoaned the absence of any technology from the list, but this year – happily – I can highlight a couple of titles from the list.
Mars City
For example – catching my eye – is “A City on Mars” by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith (published by Particular Books). It’s subtitle is: “Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?”
Betteridge’s Law states the answer would be No, No and No. But I suspect my answer is Yes, No and No. But I am interested to read it to find out more!
The book is described as an “entertaining yet measured analysis of the merits and numerous potential challenges of humans settling in space. In a wonderfully creative way, they analyse one of the biggest questions about the future of humanity in a conversational and refreshing tone.”
AI
There’s also AI and privacy in a commercial context. The book is “Your Face Belongs to Us: The Secretive Startup Dismantling Your Privacy by Kashmir Hill” (published by Simon & Schuster)
It is described in the shortlist as “a true story that has a thriller-like, cinematic quality through sheer impact”. Regretably, but all too believably, it is full of “staggering accounts” of individuals being wrongly convicted and facing major injustices…
2024 Shortlist
The full shortlist is:
- Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon (Hutchinson Heinemann)
- Everything Is Predictable: How Bayes’ Remarkable Theorem Explains the World by Tom Chivers (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
- Your Face Belongs to Us: The Secretive Startup Dismantling Your Privacy by Kashmir Hill (Simon & Schuster)
- The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction by Gísli Pálsson (Princeton University Press)
- Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality by Venki Ramakrishnan (Hodder Press)
- A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith (Particular Books)
Prize winner will be announced at a ceremony at the Royal Society on 24 October, and they will win £25,000. Each of the five shortlisted authors will receive £2,500.
Judging panel
As well as Professor John Hutchinson, the 2024 judging panel comprises Booker Prize-winning author and screenwriter Eleanor Catton; New Scientist Comment and Culture Editor Alison Flood; teacher, broadcaster and writer Bobby Seagull; and lecturer in Functional Materials at Imperial College London, and Royal Society University Research Fellow, Dr Jess Wade.
You can read more about the Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize online.
Founded in 1660 – given a royal charter by King Charles II – the Royal Society is a fellowship of the world’s most eminent scientists and is actually the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence.
This week we were happy to announce the shortlist for this year's Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize, celebrating the best in popular science writing from around the globe, from #AI and privacy issues to the challenges of space settlement: #SciBooks https://t.co/3v4lwA04Yx pic.twitter.com/xl4bgy33iH
— The Royal Society (@royalsociety) August 16, 2024
Trivedi
As you can tell from its full title, the award is now supported by the Trivedi Family Foundation.
“So many of the most urgent problems that face us today can only be solved by thinking in an interdisciplinary way,” said Ashok Trivedi. He is president of the foundation, and a founder the IT services companies, Mastech Digital and IGATE.
“[The Prize] celebrates two disciplines that are often seen as worlds apart, science and literature. Both set out to explore the world around us, bringing new ideas to life or challenge us to better understand what is already known, and both require passion and creativity.”
See also: Over the shoulder of giants – Royal Society launches digital archive portal
