By Daisy Shayegan, Harry Banham, Grace Briggs-Jones, and Florrie Hulbert
The Royal Society Trivedi Prize is an internationally awarded for popular science writing and authors. Created in 1988, the Trivedi Prize aims to choose one popular science book as the winner, one which the panelists believe is the most compelling and accessible for the public reading sphere. The Prize has had multiple previous names, but its current banner of Trivedi is a homage to the Prize’s sponsor since 2023, the Trivedi Family Foundation. The President of the foundation, Ashok Trivedi, states that he is extremely pleased to support the Trivedi Prize as it aims to bring together two important fundamentals – science and literature.
The prize winner will be announced at the award ceremony on 24 October 2024 and receive £25,000. The remaining five authors will also receive a prize of £2,500 each in recognition of their contributions to popular science writing. Let’s look at the shortlisted books in more detail:
Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon
Eve is a startling debut from Cat Bohannon, in which she develops a female-centric history of the human species. Going back 200 million years, Bohannon addresses vital questions around the development of the female sex, examining uncomfortable questions about evolutionary developments: how women’s brains developed comparably to men’s. Her interdisciplinary writing, drawing on references from literature, film studies, biochemistry, cognitive science, and anthropology, is sprinkled with humour and wit. She implores readers to learn more about women and girls, drawing attention to the fact that in the UK, no regulation demands women to be included in medical research.
Everything Is Predictable: How Bayes’ Remarkable Theorem Explains the World by Tom Chivers
An enthralling exploration of Thomas Bayes' revolutionary probability theorem, Everything Is Predictable blends biography with science writing to propose the discoveries of this once-obscure mathematician are foundational to our understanding of rationality. From medical testing to artificial intelligence, Chivers illustrates how a single compelling idea can have far-reaching consequences, including false positives and justice failures. A distinguished science writer, Chivers has been recognised with the Royal Statistical Society's Statistical Excellence in Journalism awards in 2018 and 2020 and was named Science Writer of the Year by the Association of British Science Writers in 2021. Now, he can also add being shortlisted for the Royal Society Book Award to his impressive list of achievements.
Your Face Belongs to Us: The Secretive Startup Dismantling Your Privacy by Kashmir Hill
This gripping true story follows Hill, a technology reporter for The New York Times, as she delves into the shadowy world of Clearview AI, a facial recognition platform claiming a 98.6% accuracy rate. Your Face Belongs to Us explores how facial recognition technology has already become intertwined with our lives and examines where it might head next. This shocking and essential read sheds light on our complex, troubled relationship with technology, revealing how it could pave the way to a dystopian future.
The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction by Gísli Pálsson
Drawing on first-hand accounts, Gísli Pálsson brings to life the era of Victorian exploration and vividly depicts the human causes of mass animal extinction. Focusing on the great auk, a flightless bird native to remote islands in the North Atlantic, The Last of Its Kind blends narrative and anthropological insights to tell the story of the last of the species, which was hunted to extinction in Iceland in 1844. A professor of anthropology at the University of Iceland, Pálsson has extensively studied environmental anthropology, arctic cultures, and extinction events, which all culminate in this tragic and evocative work.
Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality by Venki Ramakrishnan
Living is a condition haunted by the inevitable: death. In this book, Nobel Prize-winning biologist Venki Ramakrishnan examines why death is the only thing we can be sure of. Why We Die recounts the history of the fear of death and its manifestations in different religions. Ramakrishnan explores recent developments in extending our lifespans and further probes the ethical questions raised by discussions of immortality. Stephen Fry has commended Ramakrishnan for “explaining the science behind ageing and death with clarity, wit and enviably entertaining narrative flair.”
A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
A City on Mars investigates whether the tantalising dream of space settlement is a good idea. It asks whether we have the knowledge to build a space society without sparking even more conflict back on earth. Written by Dr Kelly Weinersmith, a BioScience researcher at Rice University, and her husband, Zach Weinersmith, an acclaimed webcomic creator, A City on Mars draws on original research and interviews with scientists, engineers, and lawyers to humorously tackle some of the biggest questions facing humanity today – how to become a multi-planetary civilisation and would it even be worth it?
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