Best science book ever
Encyclopedia
On October 19, 2006 the Royal Institution
Royal Institution
The Royal Institution of Great Britain is an organization devoted to scientific education and research, based in London.-Overview:...

 of Great Britain named The Periodic Table
The Periodic Table (book)
The Periodic Table is a collection of short stories by Primo Levi, published in 1975, named after the periodic table in chemistry. In 2006, the Royal Institution of Great Britain named it the best science book ever ....

, by Primo Levi
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist and writer. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems, but is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland...

, the best science book ever. After taking nominations from many scientists in various disciplines, authors, and other notable people (such as the Archbishop of Canterbury
Archbishop of Canterbury
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group...

) the Royal Institution compiled a shortlist of books for consideration. This shortlist was presented to the public at an event held at Imperial College and the audience voted to determine which book was "the best."

The Shortlist

  • The Periodic Table
    The Periodic Table (book)
    The Periodic Table is a collection of short stories by Primo Levi, published in 1975, named after the periodic table in chemistry. In 2006, the Royal Institution of Great Britain named it the best science book ever ....

    by Primo Levi
    Primo Levi
    Primo Michele Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist and writer. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems, but is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland...

  • King Solomon's Ring
    King Solomon's Ring (nonfiction)
    King Solomon's Ring is a zoological book for the general audience, written by the Austrian scientist Konrad Lorenz in 1949. The first English-language edition appeared in 1952....

    by Konrad Lorenz
    Konrad Lorenz
    Konrad Zacharias Lorenz was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch...

  • Arcadia
    Arcadia (play)
    Arcadia is a 1993 play by Tom Stoppard concerning the relationship between past and present and between order and disorder and the certainty of knowledge...

    by Tom Stoppard
    Tom Stoppard
    Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...

  • The Selfish Gene
    The Selfish Gene
    The Selfish Gene is a book on evolution by Richard Dawkins, published in 1976. It builds upon the principal theory of George C. Williams's first book Adaptation and Natural Selection. Dawkins coined the term "selfish gene" as a way of expressing the gene-centred view of evolution as opposed to the...

    by Richard Dawkins
    Richard Dawkins
    Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...


Other Nominees

  • The Double Helix
    The Double Helix
    The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA is an autobiographical account of the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA written by James D. Watson and published in 1968. It was and remains a controversial account...

    by James Watson
    James D. Watson
    James Dewey Watson is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist, best known as one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA in 1953 with Francis Crick...

  • The Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht
    Bertolt Brecht
    Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...

  • Pluto's Republic by Peter Medawar
    Peter Medawar
    Sir Peter Brian Medawar OM CBE FRS was a British biologist, whose work on graft rejection and the discovery of acquired immune tolerance was fundamental to the practice of tissue and organ transplants...

  • Voyage of the Beagle
    Voyage of the Beagle
    The voyage of the Beagle can refer to:*The second voyage of HMS Beagle*Charles Darwin's book about that voyage, The Voyage of the Beagle*Other voyages of HMS Beagle...

    by Charles Darwin
    Charles Darwin
    Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

  • The Blank Slate
    The Blank Slate
    The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature is a best-selling 2002 book by Steven Pinker arguing against tabula rasa models of the social sciences. Pinker argues that human behavior is substantially shaped by evolutionary psychological adaptations...

    by Steven Pinker
    Steven Pinker
    Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...

  • A Leg to Stand On by Oliver Sacks
    Oliver Sacks
    Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE , is a British neurologist and psychologist residing in New York City. He is a professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University, where he also holds the position of Columbia Artist...

  • Consciousness Explained
    Consciousness Explained
    Consciousness Explained is a 1991 book by the American philosopher Daniel Dennett which offers an account of how consciousness arises from interaction of physical and cognitive processes in the brain.-Synopsis:...

    by Dan Dennett
  • Shadows of the Mind
    Shadows of the Mind
    Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness is a 1994 book by mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, and serves as a followup to his 1989 book The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and The Laws of Physics....

    by Roger Penrose
    Roger Penrose
    Sir Roger Penrose OM FRS is an English mathematical physicist and Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College...

  • On Growth and Form by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
    D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
    Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson CB FRS FRSE was a Scottish biologist, mathematician, and classics scholar. A pioneering mathematical biologist, he is mainly remembered as the author of the 1917 book On Growth and Form, written largely in Dundee in 1915...

  • Invention by Norbert Wiener
    Norbert Wiener
    Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician.A famous child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.Wiener is regarded as the originator of cybernetics, a...

  • Gödel, Escher, Bach
    Gödel, Escher, Bach
    Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is a book by Douglas Hofstadter, described by his publishing company as "a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll"....

    by Douglas Hofstadter
    Douglas Hofstadter
    Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics...

  • Mathematics, Form and Function
    Mathematics, Form and Function
    Mathematics, Form and Function is a survey of the whole of mathematics, including its origins and deep structure, by the American mathematician Saunders Mac Lane.- Mac Lane's relevance to the philosophy of mathematics :...

    by Saunders Mac Lane
    Saunders Mac Lane
    Saunders Mac Lane was an American mathematician who cofounded category theory with Samuel Eilenberg.-Career:...

  • A Mathematician's Apology
    A Mathematician's Apology
    A Mathematician's Apology is a 1940 essay by British mathematician G. H. Hardy. It concerns the aesthetics of mathematics with some personal content, and gives the layman an insight into the mind of a working mathematician.-Summary:...

    by G.H. Hardy
  • The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
    The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
    The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales is a 1985 book by neurologist Oliver Sacks describing the case histories of some of his patients. The title of the book comes from the case study of a man with visual agnosia...

    by Oliver Sacks
    Oliver Sacks
    Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE , is a British neurologist and psychologist residing in New York City. He is a professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University, where he also holds the position of Columbia Artist...

  • How to Build a Time Machine
    How to Build a Time Machine
    How to Build a Time Machine by Paul Davies is a 2002, non-fiction book that discusses the possibilities of time travel. It was published by Penguin Books....

    by Paul Davies
    Paul Davies
    Paul Charles William Davies, AM is an English physicist, writer and broadcaster, currently a professor at Arizona State University as well as the Director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science...

  • Mason & Dixon
    Mason & Dixon
    Mason & Dixon is a postmodernist novel by American author Thomas Pynchon published in 1997. It centers on the collaboration of the historical Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in their astronomical and surveying exploits in Cape Colony, Saint Helena, Great Britain and along the Mason-Dixon line in...

    by Thomas Pynchon
    Thomas Pynchon
    Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...

  • Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
    Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
    "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character is an edited collection of reminiscences by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. The book, released in 1985, covers a variety of instances in Feynman's life...

    by Richard Feynman
    Richard Feynman
    Richard Phillips Feynman was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics...

  • The Strategy of Conflict by Thomas Schelling
    Thomas Schelling
    Thomas Crombie Schelling is an American economist and professor of foreign affairs, national security, nuclear strategy, and arms control at the School of Public Policy at University of Maryland, College Park. He is also co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute...

  • The Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif
    Paul de Kruif
    Paul Henry de Kruif was an American microbiologist and author of Dutch descent. Publishing as Paul de Kruif, he is most noted for his 1926 book, Microbe Hunters...

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