Sean Carroll’s The Particle at the End of the Universe has been named as the winner of the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books 2013. The book is published by OneWorld Publications and tells the story of the hunt for the elusive Higgs boson.
Sean Carroll said: “I feel enormous gratitude towards the thousands of physicists at the Large Hadron Collider and the millions of people who express their love for science everyday!”
Professor Uta Frith, Chair of the judges, said: “The decision to award Sean Carroll’s The Particle at the End of the Universe this year’s prize was unanimous! It is an exceptional example of the genre and a real rock star of a book. Though it’s a topic that has been tackled many times before, Carroll writes with an energy that propels readers along and fills them with his own passion. He understands their minds and anticipates their questions. There’s no doubt that this is an important, enduring piece of literature.”
Watch Sean Carroll discussing his book:
Watch interviews with the other shortlisted authors:
* Enrico Coen on Cells to Civilizations
* Charles Fernyhough on Pieces of Light
* Casper Henderson on The Book of Barely Imagined Beings
* Callum Roberts on Ocean of Life
Reading group reviews
Working with the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books, we asked six reading groups to read and review the shortlisted titles. Sarah Davis’s Greenwich Libraries reading group reviewed the winning book:
The book was very refreshing. I cannot claim to completely understand the Higgs boson, but the book did explain it in a very accessible way. I particularly liked the way the author used the analogy of ‘legoland’ to explain the complexities of the world, ‘starting with simple pieces and fitting them together…’ Each chapter is carefully constructed, like the lego bricks, allowing the reader access to a wider picture. The writing is concise and clear, and is fairly easy to follow… Although there is a lot I do not understand about physics, I found the book an interesting and fascinating read.
Read the reading groups’ reviews of the other shortlisted titles.
Get involved
Have you read The Particle at the End of the Universe, or any of the other titles shortlisted for this year’s Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books? You can share your thoughts below, or on Twitter using #SciBooks
