Mark
Miodownik’s Stuff Matters has been named as the winner of the 2014 Royal
Society Winton Prize for Science Books at an event hosted by anatomist, author
and broadcaster Professor Alice Roberts. The £25,000 prize is the world’s
leading award for popular science books. Stuff Matters, published by Viking (an
imprint of Penguin Books), takes the reader on a journey through materials that
shape the man-made world.
A
delighted Mark Miodownik said: “This matters such a lot to me. I am
surprised, honoured and very very happy!”
The
£25,000 prize was awarded to materials scientist, TV presenter and author, Mark
Miodownik by Sir Paul Nurse, Nobel Prize-winning President of the Royal Society
at a ceremony at the Society’s headquarters in London. Miodowniks
‘sparkling and very personal’ tale was chosen unanimously as the winner by the
judges, despite coming up against some strong competitors on the shortlist,
including Mary Roach’s Gulp and George Johnson’s The Cancer
Chronicles.
Professor Nicky Clayton FRS, Chair of the judges, said: “Mark
Miodownik’s Stuff Matters stood out from the start of the judging
process and the decision to name it winner was a unanimous one. This book is
very special - it leaves you with a feeling of being intellectually curious and
inspired by everything around you and by all the marvellous feats that our
species has accomplished. It’s a very personal and engaging story. Reading Stuff
Matters, you can’t help but be enthralled by things you didn’t even know
you were interested in to begin with.”
The
six shortlisted books were:
The Cancer
Chronicles by George Johnson
The Perfect
Theory by Pedro G. Ferreira
Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik
Serving the
Reich by Philip Ball
Seven Elements
That Have Changed The World by John Browne
Gulp by Mary Roach
Each
of the shortlisted authors receives £2,500. The first chapter of each book is
available to download for free at: royalsociety.org/awards/science-books/.
The
judges on this year’s judging panel were: Professor Nicola Clayton FRS (Chair),
Professor of Comparative Cognition at the University of Cambridge and Scientist
in Residence at Rambert (formerly Rambert Dance Company); Dr Nathalie Vriend,
Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow, Department of Applied Mathematics and
Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge; Emma Read, Head of Factual and
Features at ITN Productions; Michael Frayn, playwright and novelist, best known
as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and
Democracy; Lone Frank, former neuroscientist, journalist and author of My
Beautiful Genome, shortlisted for the 2012 Royal Society Winton Prize for
Science Books.
Commencing in 2011, the global investment management company Winton
Capital Management agreed a five year sponsorship deal of the prize.
David
Harding, Founder and Chairman of Winton Capital Management said:
“This year, the judges had a particularly difficult decision to make in
choosing a winner from a strong field of popular science books. We are
delighted that this prize helps raise awareness of science and the influence it
has in our daily lives. We congratulate Mark Miodownik on his storytelling
ingenuity. “
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