Endangered award: The science book prize

Business is booming in the sector, so why are its annual awards under threat? Steve Connor reports in The Independent, Wednesday, 20 October 2010

The only book prize in Britain dedicated to popular science could close this week with its final annual awards following the failure to find a commercial sponsor for the competition.

Last-minute attempts to find a funding partner who could be announced before this year's ceremony at the Royal Society in London tomorrow evening have failed, meaning that the annual prize will almost certainly have to be abandoned after 22 years.

The Royal Society Prize for Science Books has in the past honoured some of the most famous names in science writing, from the late American zoologist Stephen Jay Gould and the British geneticist Steve Jones, to the Cambridge cosmologist Stephen Hawking and the hugely popular travel writer Bill Bryson.
The prize began in 1988 and was seen as a way of bringing the art of science writing into mainstream literary culture, although it struggled to get the recognition of other literary prizes, such as the Man Booker, the Orange and the Costa Book Awards.
More at The Independent.