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By Will Dave on

Story Of The Search For The Higgs Boson Wins Royal Society Prize

Will Stanley, Science Museum Press Officer, blogs on the latest winner of the 2013 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books.

Will Stanley, Science Museum Press Officer, blogs on the latest winner of the 2013 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books.

Theoretical physicist, presenter and author, Sean Carroll, has won the world’s most prestigious science book prize, with his story of the search for the elusive Higgs boson.

Carroll’s The Particle at the End of the Universe (OneWorld Publications) was announced as the winner of the 2013 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books last night at the Royal Society in London.

The £25,000 prize was awarded by Sir Paul Nurse, Nobel Prize-winning President of the Royal Society, with comedian and TV presenter Dara Ó Briain hosting the event. Speaking after winning the prize, 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!”

This is a timely win for Caroll, with the discovery of the Higgs Boson in 2012 and last month’s Nobel Prize for Physics awarded to Peter Higgs and François Englert for their theoretical prediction of the Higgs boson. The Science Museum is also telling the story of the world’s greatest experiment and the hunt for the Higgs boson in a new exhibition, Collider.

Peter Higgs and Stephen Hawking in the Collider exhibition.
Peter Higgs and Stephen Hawking in the Collider exhibition.

Judges for the 2013 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books included impressionist Jon Culshaw, novelist Joanne Harris, journalist Lucy Siegle and Dr Emily Flashman, Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow at University of Oxford.

The panel was chaired by Professor Uta Frith DBE FBA FRS, Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Development at University College London, who described the book as “an exceptional example of the genre and a real rock star of a book.” Frith went on to explain, “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. There’s no doubt that this is an important, enduring piece of literature.”

Carroll’s telling of ‘the greatest science story of our time saw off strong competition from a riveting shortlist of authors:

  • Bird Sense by Tim Birkhead, published by Bloomsbury
  • The Particle at the End of the Universe by Sean Carroll, published by OneWorld Publications
  • Cells to Civilizations by Enrico Coen, published by Princeton University Press
  • Pieces of Light by Charles Fernyhough, published by Profile Books
  • The Book of Barely Imagined Beings by Caspar Henderson, published by Granta
  • Ocean of Life by Callum Roberts, published by Allen Lane (Penguin Books)

If you would like to read more of these books, the Royal Society have published the first chapter of each book here.

Now in its 25th year, the book prize is sponsored by investment management company Winton Capital Management (supporters of our Collider exhibition). David Harding, Founder and Chairman of Winton Capital Management commented, “Sean Carroll’s book is a fascinating account of an inspiring scientific experiment that has brought thousands of people from different countries together to pursue knowledge in a collective way.”