Archive Collection
Royal Society Science Book Prize Winners
1988–2025
The Royal Society Science Book Prize celebrates the very best in popular science writing, awarded annually since 1988 to books that make science accessible and engaging to general readers.
About the Royal Society Science Book Prize
- Awarded by
- The Royal Society
- First awarded
- 1988
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Winner receives
- £25,000
When it is announced
The winner is announced in the autumn, usually October, after a shortlist in the summer. See the full announcement calendar.
How to enter
Publishers submit popular science books written for a general reader rather than for specialists.
Official prize site · Checked August 2026. Dates move year to year, so confirm on the official site before entering.
| Year | Title & Author | Historical Context |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Our Brains, Our Selves: What a Neurologist's Patients Taught Him About the Brain | Our Brains, Our Selves won the Royal Society Trivedi prize in 2025, a debut from a working clinician: Masud Husain is professor of neurology and… |
| 2024 | A City on Mars | A City on Mars won the Royal Society Trivedi prize in 2024 and, months earlier, the Hugo Award for best related work, a pairing that measures its… |
| 2023 | An Immense World | An Immense World won the Royal Society prize in 2023 and the Carnegie Medal for nonfiction in America, made the New York Times ten best books of its… |
| 2022 | A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth | A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth won the Royal Society prize in 2022, sponsored that year by Insight Investment, at a ceremony hosted by Jim… |
| 2021 | Entangled Life | Entangled Life won the Royal Society prize in 2021 and the Wainwright Prize for conservation writing, sat on bestseller lists through the pandemic… |
| 2020 | Explaining Humans | Explaining Humans won the Royal Society prize in 2020, and the win set records and precedents together: Camilla Pang, at twenty eight, was the… |
| 2019 | Invisible Women | Invisible Women won the Royal Society prize in 2019 and, in the same season, the Financial Times and McKinsey business book of the year, a pairing… |
| 2018 | Inventing Ourselves | Inventing Ourselves won the Royal Society prize in 2018, the judges calling it a completely captivating read by the field's leading expert, and the… |
| 2017 | Testosterone Rex | Testosterone Rex won the Royal Society prize in 2017, the judges praising a forensic look at gender stereotypes, and the choice was, in the politest… |
| 2016 | The Invention of Nature | The Invention of Nature won the Royal Society prize in 2016, the first year of the Insight Investment sponsorship, having already taken the Costa… |
| 2015 | Adventures in the Anthropocene | Adventures in the Anthropocene won the Royal Society Winton prize in 2015, and the win made overdue history: Gaia Vince was the first woman to take… |
| 2014 | Stuff Matters | Stuff Matters: The Strange Stories of the Marvellous Materials that Shape Our Man Made World won the 2014 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science… |
| 2013 | The Particle at the End of the Universe | The Particle at the End of the Universe won the Royal Society Winton prize in 2013, the judges calling it the best telling of an extraordinary tale… |
| 2012 | The Information | The Information won the Royal Society Winton prize in 2012 and the PEN/E. O. Wilson award for science writing, and spent weeks on the bestseller… |
| 2011 | The Wavewatcher's Companion | The Wave Watcher's Companion won the Royal Society Winton prize in 2011, and its author's origin story is part of British publishing folklore: Gavin… |
| 2010 | Life Ascending | Life Ascending won the Royal Society prize in 2010, and the judges' choice elevated a writer the field already knew: Nick Lane, a University College… |
| 2009 | The Age of Wonder | The Age of Wonder won the Royal Society prize in 2009 and the National Book Critics Circle award for nonfiction in America, a transatlantic double… |
| 2008 | Six Degrees | Six Degrees won the Royal Society prize in 2008, the first climate book to take the award, and National Geographic built a documentary, Six Degrees… |
| 2007 | Stumbling on Happiness | Stumbling on Happiness won the Royal Society Prize in 2007, the first year the Society ran the award without a sponsor's name attached, and it was… |
| 2006 | Electric Universe | Electric Universe won the Aventis Prize in 2006, the judging chair Nick Ross calling it wonderfully accessible and simply a very good read, and it… |
| 2005 | Critical Mass | Critical Mass won the Aventis Prize in 2005, recognition for its scale and ambition, and for its author's unusual position: Philip Ball, a chemist… |
| 2004 | A Short History of Nearly Everything | A Short History of Nearly Everything won the Aventis Prize in 2004, and Bryson gave the ten thousand pounds to Great Ormond Street Hospital; the EU's… |
| 2003 | Right Hand, Left Hand | Right Hand, Left Hand won the Aventis Prize in 2003, having already taken the Wellcome Trust Prize, a rare double for a popular science book, and its… |
| 2002 | The Universe in a Nutshell | The Universe in a Nutshell won the prize in 2002, giving the award its most famous winner: by then Stephen Hawking had been in his Cambridge chair… |
| 2001 | Mapping the Deep | Mapping the Deep won the prize in 2001, the first year of Aventis's sponsorship, and it remains one of the least famous winners on the list, which… |
| 2000 | The Elegant Universe | The Elegant Universe won the Science Book Prize in 2000 and was a Pulitzer finalist, and it made Brian Greene the public face of theoretical physics… |
| 1999 | The Man Who Loved Only Numbers | The Man Who Loved Only Numbers won the Science Book Prize in 1999, defeating, among others, E. O. Wilson, and it stands with Sylvia Nasar's A… |
| 1998 | Guns, Germs, and Steel | Guns, Germs, and Steel won the Science Book Prize in 1998, the same season it took the Pulitzer for general nonfiction, making Jared Diamond the… |
| 1997 | The Wisdom of the Bones | The Wisdom of the Bones won the Science Book Prize in 1997, and it stands as the insider companion to the outsider book the prize honoured eight… |
| 1996 | Plague's Progress | Plague's Progress won the Science Book Prize in 1996, and its author is among the more unexpected figures in the prize's history: Arno Karlen was an… |
| 1995 | The Consumer's Good Chemical Guide | The Consumer's Good Chemical Guide won the Science Book Prize in 1995, a pointed choice: the year's award going to a book whose explicit mission was… |
| 1994 | The Language of the Genes | The Language of Genes won the Science Book Prize in 1994, and it was already famous in another medium: the book grew from Jones's 1991 Reith… |
| 1993 | The Making of Memory | The Making of Memory won the Science Book Prize in 1993, the judges calling it a riveting read and singling out exactly its distinction, a first hand… |
| 1992 | The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee | The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee won the Science Book Prize in 1992, Jared Diamond's first major award and the prize's fifth year, and it… |
| 1991 | Wonderful Life | Wonderful Life won the Science Book Prize in 1991 and was a Pulitzer finalist, where the nonfiction jury recommended it unanimously and the board… |
| 1990 | The Emperor's New Mind | The Emperor's New Mind won the Science Book Prize in 1990, the year Rhône-Poulenc's sponsorship began, and it landed as a four hundred and eighty… |
| 1989 | Bones of Contention | Bones of Contention won the Science Book Prize in 1989, its second year, and marked the award finding its real subject: not science summarised but… |
| 1988 | Living with Risk | Living with Risk won the first Science Book Prize ever awarded, in 1988, which gives it a distinction no later book can claim and an asterisk no… |