The winners of the American Physical Society's Science Writing Awards for 2008 were announced today:
- Ann Finkbeiner won in the Journalist category for The Jasons, her book about a secretive groups of scientists who work on classified problems for the US government.
- Gino Segre won in the Scientist category, for Faust in Copenhagen, about the early days of quantum mechanics.
- Julia Cort won in the Broadcast category for the NOVA ScienceNow episode Asteroid, about whether a giant asteroid will kill us all in 2036.
- Alexandra Siy and Dennis Kunkel have won in the Children's category, for their book Sneeze! which combines photographs and prose about, well, sneezing, with electron micrographs of things that make us sneeze.
Congratulations to all the winners.
The fact that I wasn't really aware of the existence of an APS Science Writing Award says something about the quality of the APS's publicity regarding these awards. But, hey, now I have something to put in the "Awards this book may be eligible for" blank on the author publicity questionnaire I'm (slowly) filling out for my publisher...
Humanities & Social Science
Physical Science
Comments
I bought The Jasons, and first scanned the index and saw that I've spoken to over a dozen people described therein. Almost none of them had told me any of what's in this book. As a science fiction writer, I was humbled. I can't make up stuff as amazing as what these people did.
Faust in Copenhagen I read, having been pointed to it by an amazing review by Freeman Dyson. Puts personalities and conflicts as flesh on the skeleton of modern Physics history.
These books richly deserve awards.
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | February 24, 2009 10:55 PM