The U.K.-based Royal Society announced the finalists for its 2023 Royal Society Science Book Prize, with six books in contention for the award for “the best popular science writing from across the globe.”
Ed Yong made the shortlist for An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. The book won the Andrew Carnegie Medal and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Jellyfish Age Backwards: Nature’s Secrets to Longevity, writtenby Nicklas Brendborg and translated by Elizabeth de Noma, was named a finalist; Brendborg, 28, is the youngest person in the prize’s history to be named a finalist.
Roma Agrawal made the shortlist for Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (in a Big Way), along with Lev Parikian for Taking Flight: The Evolutionary Story of Life on the Wing.
Also named finalists were David Quammen for Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus, which was previously a National Book Award finalist, and Kate Zernike for The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science.
The Royal Society Science Book Prize was first awarded in 1988. Previous winners include Jared Diamond for Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies; Stephen Hawking for The Universe in a Nutshell; and Caroline Criado Perez for Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.
The winner of this year’s award will be announced on Nov. 22.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
