Last night, at a ceremony in London, Gavin Pretor-Pinney was named as this year’s Royal Society Winton Book Prize winner. His winning book, The Wavewatcher’s Companion, is his second, and followed naturally in the footsteps of The Cloudspotter’s Guide. He told me “many waves are revealed by clouds”, and that the act of watching clouds and waves is “rounding and calming”. When I asked if he had a trilogy in him, Pretor-Pinney said he was uncertain but that: “what interests me is the ordinary, finding what’s exotic in our surroundings, seeing the miraculous in what is around us.” The Wavewatcher’s  … Read more

Forty-eight years ago an unassuming physicist drove to Princeton to present a controversial theory on the origin of mass. His visit triggered a hunt for a particle that has so far taken decades, involved billions of dollars, and simultaneously raised and dashed the hopes of a generation of scientists.

Ruth Francis, Nature’s Head of Press, is reviewing all the entries shortlisted for the Royal Society’s science book prize. She’ll be reading one per week and posting her thoughts on the news blog every Friday between now and the prize ceremony on 17 November  … Read more