BOOK AWARDS
Aventis Science Prize 2005
http://www.aventisprizes.com/home_welcome.htm
The Aventis Prizes for Science Books are an annual book prize, which celebrate the very best in popular science writing for adults and children; they have become become one of the UK’s most prestigious non-fiction literary prizes. The Prizes are owned by the Royal Society, the UK national academy of science, who manged the Prizes with the generous support of the Aventis Foundation.
There are two categories: The Junior Prize, which is given to the best book written for under-14s, and the General Prize, for the best book written for a more general readership. Each prize is worth £10,000 to the winning author and £1,000 to each of the shortlisted authors.
The General Prize is chosen by a panel of five judges who select approximately six shortlisted books and subsequently a winner. For the Junior Prize, initially a panel of five adult judges chooses the shortlist of six books. The task of picking the winner is then handed over to the people who should know best — young people aged up to fourteen.
Winner (announced June 2005)
The winner has been announced as:
Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another
by Philip Ball and published by William Heinemann (0434011355)
Shortlist (announced May 2005)
| Title | Author | Publisher | ISBN |
| Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another | Philip Ball | William Heinemann | 0434011355 |
| The Ancestor’s Tale | Richard Dawkins | Weidenfeld & Nicholson | 0297825038 |
| Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older | Douwe Draaisma | Cambridge University Press | 0521834244 |
| Matters of Substance: Drugs – and Why Everyone’s a User | Griffith Edwards | Penguin, Allen Lane | 0713996897 |
| The Earth: An Intimate History | Richard Fortey | HarperCollins | 0002570114 |
| The Human Mind: And How to Make the Most of it | Robert Winston | Bantam Press/ Transworld Publishers | 0593052102 |
