Philip Ball

Philip Ball is widely recognised as a leading communicator of the relationships between science and the wider culture. For example, his book The Music Instinct (2010), a survey of the cognitive understanding of music, became a bestseller and was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction. Philip’s most recent book, The Water Kingdom (2016), was selected as a Book of the Year by the Times and the Economist. He received the Editorial Intelligence Comment Award for Best Science Commentator in 2015 and again in 2017.
Philip writes regularly on all areas of science in both popular and technical outlets. For many years he was an editor for Nature, to which he still contributes regularly. He has featured on many national and international radio and television programmes, and he is a presenter of the science history series Science Stories on BBC Radio 4.