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Royal Society announces judging panel for 2024 Trivedi Science Book Prize
The Royal Society has announced the judging panel for this year’s Trivedi Science Book Prize. Those on the panel have been selected from across science, culture and the media.
This year’s chair will be professor of evolutionary biomechanics at the Royal Veterinary College and Royal Society Fellow professor John Hutchinson. He will be joined by 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.
The Royal Society Trivedi Book Prize, supported by the Trivedi Family Foundation, which celebrates the best popular science writing across the globe, is entering its 37th year.
The prize highlights the important role of science literature in helping mainstream audiences understand some of the complex scientific challenges facing society today.
Hutchinson said: "It is a pleasure to serve as judging panel chair for the esteemed 2024 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize. When I was a young person, I immensely benefitted from my public and school libraries’ stocks of science books, which kindled and maintained my interest in science and nature. I won’t forget how Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring woke me up, at about 12 years of age, to environmentalism, which remains a passion. During my undergraduate years, palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould’s popular science books convinced me that I wanted to pursue a career studying evolutionary patterns and processes. Now we live in an age when 250-word social media posts have potency to reach the world instantly, but books maintain their staying power in reinforcing and disseminating what information is the most reliable. Deciding the best science books of the year is a wonderful challenge, a pleasure and an opportunity to be part of this process and thereby to support the communication of science.”
A shortlist of six titles, selected from a total of 254 submissions published between 1st July 2023 and 30th September 2024, will be announced live as part of an event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 12th August. The winner will be revealed at a ceremony at the Royal Society on 24th October, where they will be presented with a cheque for £25,000. Each of the five shortlisted authors will receive a cheque for £2,500.
Ashok Trivedi, president of the Trivedi Family Foundation which supports the prize in a five-year partnership, said: “Science books have the ability to inspire and help us better understand the world we live in. We can discover new ideas but also challenge what we already know through science writing. It is a pleasure to continue supporting this prestigious prize and celebrate authors who bring passion and creativity into their work.”
