Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize

Christchurch City Libraries lists literary prize winners and links to catalogue searches, but we may not hold copies of all titles mentioned.

The Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize is the only major international prize that celebrates science writing for a non-specialist audience. Winners receive £25,000. Shortlisted authors receive £2,500 each.

The Prize was originally established as the "Science Books Prize" in 1988 with the aim of encouraging the writing, publishing and reading of good and accessible popular science books. From 1990-2000 it was known as the "Rhône-Poulenc Prize for Science Books"; from 2001-2006 as the "Aventis Prize for Science Books"; from 2007-2010 as the "Royal Society Prize for Science Books"; and as the "Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books" 2011 to 2015. It was also previously known as The Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize.

See the other Royal Society Prizes for Science Books category winners and all the other literary prize winners we list, including non-fiction prizes.

2024

The shortlist was announced on 12 August, and the winner was announced on 24 October 2024.

• A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith Winner
• Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon
• Everything Is Predictable: How Bayes’ Remarkable Theorem Explains the World by Tom Chivers 
• Your Face Belongs to Us: The Secretive Startup Dismantling Your Privacy by Kashmir Hill
• The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction by Gísli Pálsson
• Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality by Venki Ramakrishnan

2023

The shortlist was announced on 27 September, and the winner was announced on 22 November 2023.

• An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us Ed Yong Winner
• Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (in a Big Way) Roma Agrawal
• Jellyfish Age Backwards: Nature’s Secrets to Longevity Nicklas Brendborg, translated by Elizabeth de Noma
• Taking Flight: The Evolutionary Story of Life on the Wing Lev Parikian
• Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus David Quammen
• The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins and the Fight for Women in Science Kate Zernike 

2022

• A (Very) Short history of life on earth Henry Gee Winner
• Age proof: The new science of living a longer and healthier life Rose Anne Kenny
• Different: What apes can teach us about gender Frans de Waal
• Hot air: The inside story of the battle against climate change denial Peter Stott
• Spike: The virus vs the people the inside story Jeremy Farrar with Anjana Ahuja
• The Greywacke: How a priest, a soldier and a schoolteacher uncovered 300 million years of history Nick Davidson

2021 

• Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures Merlin Sheldrake Winner
• Breath: The New Science of A Lost Art James Nestor
• Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth Stuart Ritchie
• The End of Bias: How We Change Our Minds Jessica Nordell
• The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers Emily Levesque
• The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness Suzanne O’Sullivan

2020 

• Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us about Life, Love and Relationships Camilla Pang Winner
• The World According to Physics Jim Al-Khalili
• The Body: A Guide for Occupants Bill Bryson
• The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness Susannah Cahalan
• Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us about Life, Love and Relationships Camilla Pang
• The Double X Economy: The Epic Power of Empowering Women Linda Scott
• Transcendence: How Humans Evolved through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time Gaia Vince

2019

• Invisible women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men Caroline Criado-Perez Winner
• Six impossible things: The 'quanta of Solace' and the Mysteries of the Subatomic World John Gribbin
• The remarkable life of the skin: An intimate journey across our surface Monty Lyman
• Clearing the air: The beginning and the end of air pollution Tim Smedley
• The second kind of impossible: The extraordinary quest for a new form of matter Paul J. Steinhardt
• Infinite powers: The Story of Calculus: the Language of the Universe Steven Strogatz

2018 

• Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain Sarah-Jayne Blakemore Winner
• The Unexpected Truth About Animals Lucy Cooke
• The Beautiful Cure: Harnessing your body's natural defences Daniel M Davis
• Hello world: How to be human in the age of the machine Hannah Fry
• Liquid: The delightful and dangerous substances that flow through our lives Mark Miodownik
• Exactly: How precision engineers created the modern world by Simon Winchester

2017

• Beyond Infinity: An Expedition to the Outer Limits of the Mathematical Universe by Eugenia Cheng
• Testosterone Rex: Unmaking the Myths of Our Gendered Minds by Cordelia Fine Winner
• Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life by Peter Godfrey-Smith
• In Pursuit of Memory: The Fight Against Alzheimer's by Joseph Jebelli
• To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death by Mark O'Connell
• I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong

2016

• The most perfect thing: Inside and outside a bird's egg Tim Birkhead
• The hunt for Vulcan: How Albert Einstein Destroyed A Planet and Deciphered the Universe Thomas Levenson
• Cure: A Journey Into the Science of Mind Over Body Jo Marchant
• The planet remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World Oliver Morton
• The gene: An intimate history Siddhartha Mukherjee
• The invention of nature: The Adventures of Alexander Von Humboldt's, the Lost Hero of Science Andrea Wulf Winner

2015

• Adventures in the Anthropocene: a journey to the heart of the planet we made Gaia Vince Winner
• The man who couldn't stop: OCD, and the true story of a life lost in thought David Adam
• Alex through the looking-glass: how life reflects numbers and numbers reflect life Alex Bellos
• Smashing physics: inside the world's biggest experiment Jon Butterworth
• Life's greatest secret: the story of the race to crack the genetic code Matthew Cobb
• Life on the edge: the coming of age of quantum biology Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili

2014

• Stuff matters: the strange stories of the marvellous materials that shape our man-made world Mark Miodownik Winner
• Serving the Reich: the struggle for the soul of physics under Hitler Philip Ball
• Seven elements that have changed the world: iron, carbon, gold, silver, uranium, titanium, silicon John Browne
• The perfect theory: a century of geniuses and the battle over general relativity Pedro G. Ferreira
• The cancer chronicles: unlocking medicine's deepest mystery George Johnson
• Gulp: adventures of the alimentary canal Mary Roach

2013

• The particle at the end of the universe: the hunt for the Higgs and the discovery of a new world Sean Carroll Winner
• Bird sense: what it's like to be a bird Tim Birkhead
• Cells to civilizations: principles of change that shape life Enrico Coen
• Pieces of light: the new science of memory Charles Fernyhough
• The book of barely imagined beings: a 21st century bestiary Caspar Henderson
• Ocean of life: the fate of man and the sea Callum Roberts

2012

• The information: a history, a theory, a flood James Gleick Winner
• Moonwalking with Einstein: the art and science of remembering everything Joshua Foer
• My beautiful genome: exposing our genetic future, one quirk at a time Lone Frank
• The hidden reality: parallel universes and the deep laws of the cosmos Brian Greene
• The better angels of our nature: the decline of violence in history and its causes Steven Pinker
• The viral storm Nathan Wolfe

2011

• The wavewatcher’s companion Gavin Pretor-Pinney Winner
• Alex's adventures in Numberland Alex Bellos
• Through the language glass: why the world looks different in other languages Guy Deutscher
• The disappearing spoon: and other true tales of madness, love, and the history of the world From the periodic table of the elements Sam Kean
• Massive: the hunt for the God particle Ian Sample
• The rough Guide to the future Jon Turney

2010

• Life ascending: the ten great inventions of evolution Nick Lane Winner
• We need to talk about Kelvin: what everyday things tell us about the universe Marcus Chown
• Why does E=mc2 (and why should we care?) Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw
• Everyday practice of science: where intuition and passion meet objectivity and logic Frederick Grinnell
• God’s philosophers: how the medieval world laid the foundations of modern science James Hannam
• A world without ice Henry Pollack

2009

• The age of wonder: how the Romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of science Richard Holmes Winner
• What the nose knows: the science of scent in everyday life Avery Gilbert
• Bad science Ben Goldacre
• Decoding the heavens: solving the mystery of the world’s first computer Jo Marchant
• The drunkard’s walk: how randomness rules our lives Leonard Mlodinow
• Your inner fish: a journey into the 3.5 billion year history of the human body Neil Shubin

2008

• Six degrees: our future on a hotter planet Mark Lynas Winner
• The sun kings: the unexpected tragedy of Richard Carrington and the tale of how modern astronomy began Stuart Clark
• Gut feelings: the intelligence of the unconscious Gerd Gigerenzer
• Coral : A pessimist in paradise Steve Jones
• Why beauty is truth: a history of symmetry Ian Stewart
• A life decoded: my genome: my life J. Craig Venter

2007

• Stumbling on happiness Daniel Gilbert Winner
• The Rough Guide to climate change Robert Henson
• In search of memory: the rmergence of a new science of mind Eric R. Kandel
• Lonesome George: the life and loves of a conservation icon Henry Nicholls
• Homo Britannicus: the incredible story of human life in Britain Chris Stringer
• One in three: A son's journey into the history and science of cancer Adam Wishart

2006

• Electric universe: how electricity switched on the modern world David Bodanis Winner
• Collapse: how societies choose to fail or survive Jared Diamond
• Parallel worlds: the science of alternative universes and our future in the cosmos Michio Kaku
• Power, sex, suicide: mitochondria and the meaning of life Nick Lane
• Empire of the stars: friendship, obsession and betrayal in the quest for black holes Arthur I. Miller
• The truth about hormones: what's going on when we're tetchy, spotty, fearful, tearful or just plain awful Vivienne Parry

2005

• Critical mass: how one thing leads to another Philip Ball Winner
• The ancestor's tale: a pilgrimage to the dawn of life Richard Dawkins
• Why life speeds up as you get older Douwe Draaisma
• Matters of substance: drugs - and why everyone's a user Griffith Edwards
• The Earth: an intimate history Richard Fortey
• The human mind Robert Winston

2004

• A short history of nearly everything Bill Bryson Winner
• In the beginning was the worm: finding the secrets of life in a tiny hermaphrodite Andrew Brown
• Magic universe: the Oxford guide to modern science Nigel Calder
• Mutants Armand Marie Leroi
• Nature via nurture: genes, experience and what makes us human Matt Ridley
• Backroom boys Francis Spufford

2003

• Right hand, left hand: the origins of asymmetry in brains, bodies, atoms and cultures Chris McManus Winner
• Small world Mark Buchanan
• Reckoning with risk Gerd Gigerenzer
• The extravagant universe Robert P. Kirshner
• The blank slate: the modern denial of human nature Steven Pinker
• Where is everybody? Stephen Webb

2002

• The universe in a nutshell Stephen Hawking Winner
• Aeons: the search for the beginning of time Martin Gorst
• The secret life of dust: from the cosmos to the kitchen counter, the big consequences of little things Hannah Holmes
• The madness of Adam and Eve: did schizophrenia shape humanity? David Horrobin
• A primate's memoir Robert M. Sapolsky
• Rivals: conflict as the fuel of science Michael White

2001

• Mapping the deep: the extraordinary story of ocean science Robert Kunzig Winner
• Creation: life and how to make it Steve Grand
• Strange beauty George Johnson
• Mendel's demon Mark Ridley
• Mendeleyev's dream Paul Strathern
• Malignant sadness: the anatomy of depression Lewis Wolpert

2000

• The elegant universe: superstrings, hidden dimensions and the quest for the ultimate theory Brian Greene Winner
• The white death: a history of tuberculosis Thomas Dormandy
• A brief history of the future John Naughton
• Genome: the autobiography of a species in 23 chapters Matt Ridley
• Time, love, memory Jonathan Weiner
• Children of Prometheus Christopher Wills

1999

• The man who loved only numbers Paul Hoffman Winner
• Mapping the mind Rita Carter
• A beautiful mind Sylvia Nasar
• How the mind works Steven Pinker
• One renegade cell Robert Weinberg
• Consilience Edward O. Wilson

1998

• Guns, germs and steel Jared Diamond Winner
• The fabric of reality David Deutsch
• Life: an unauthorised biography Richard Fortey
• This is biology Ernst Mayr
• Fermat's last theorem: the story of a riddle that confounded the world's greatest minds for 358 years Simon Singh
• Twins Lawrence Wright

1997

• The wisdom of bones Alan Walker and Pat Shipman Winner
• Climbing Mount Improbable Richard Dawkins
• Fire in the mind George Johnson
• In the blood: God, genes and destiny Steve Jones
• The origins of virtue Matt Ridley
• Longitude: the true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time Dava Sobel

1996

• Plague’s progress Arno Karlen Winner
• Nature's keepers Stephen Budiansky
• The Faber book of science John Carey
• About time: Einstein's unfinished revolution Paul Davies
• River out of Eden: a Darwinian view of life Richard Dawkins
• Nature's numbers: the unreal reality of mathematics Ian Stewart

1995

• The consumer’s good chemical guide John Emsley Winner
• The book of man Walter Bodmer and Robin McKie
• The covenant of the wild Stephen Budiansky
• The snows of Olympus Arthur C. Clarke
• Journey to the ants: a story of scientific exploration Bert Holldobler and Edward O. Wilson
• The language instinct Steven Pinker

1994

• The language of the genes: biology, history and the evolutionary future Steve Jones Winner
• Afterglow of creation: decoding the message from the beginning of time Marcus Chown
• The Red Queen Matt Ridley
• The Neandertals Eric Trinkaus and Pat Shipman
• The engineer in the garden: genes and genetics: from the idea of heredity to the creation of life Colin Tudge
• Dreams of a final theory Steven Weinberg
• The diversity of life Edward O. Wilson

1993

• The making of memory Steven Rose Winner
• Insects in flight John Brackenbury
• The mind of God: the scientific basis for a rational world Paul Davies
• The malaria capers Robert S. Desowitz
• Genius: Richard Feynman and modern physics James Gleick
• Virtual worlds Benjamin Woolley

1992

• The rise and fall of the third chimpanzee Jared Diamond Winner
• Darwin Adrian Desmond and James Moore
• Dawn of a millennium Erich Earth
• Fossils Niles Eldridge
• The natural history of the universe Colin Ronan
• Last animals at the zoo Colin Tudge

1991

• Wonderful life: the Burgess shale and the nature of history Stephen Jay Gould Winner
• The trials of life: a natural history of animal behaviour David Attenborough
• Genome Jerry Bishop and Michael Waldholz
• Engines of creation K. Eric Drexler
• The stuff of the universe John Gribbin and Martin Rees
• Global warming Stephen H. Schneider

1990

• The Emperor’s new mind Roger Penrose Winner
• Time reversal Anatole Abragam
• Evolution: the great debate Vernon Blackmore and Andrew Page
• The mind machine Colin Blakemore
• The new physics Paul Davies
• Senses and sensibilities Jillyn Smith

1989

• Bones of contention Roger Lewin Winner
• End. Cosmic catastrophe etc... Frank Close
• Chaos: making a new science James Gleick
• A brief history of time Stephen Hawking
• The crumbs of contention John Lenihan

1988

• Living with risk The British Medical Association Board of Science Winner
• Thinking machines Igor Aleksander and Piers Burnett
• Molecules Peter Atkins
• Egg Robert Burton
• The Omega Point John Gribbin
• The Quantum universe Tony Hey and Patrick Walters