WHO is going to win this year鈥檚 Rh么ne-Poulenc Science Book Prize? Worth
拢10 000 to the writer, this year鈥檚 contenders are a wonderful bunch.
Father of sociobiology Ed Wilson has another great idea on the shortlist: a
unifying theory for biology in Consilience, a glorious programme for
research rather than a finished product. It should win on two grounds:
intelligence and readability.
His nearest rival is Robert Weinberg with One Renegade Cell, a racy
account of cancer鈥檚 powers and weaknesses plus great tales from the labs. And
Steven Pinker鈥檚 sprawling mass of a book How the Mind Works presents a
serious challenge. But it鈥檚 a great way to get up to speed on one of the debates
of the century: what is mind?
Rita Carter takes this idea to the masses in her Mapping the Mind.
She presents what we know from modern brain imaging techniques. As an
illustrated guide to how it all works, this should be on your shelf. Sylvia
Nasar鈥檚 A Beautiful Mind explores a single, extraordinary mind.
Mathematician Paul Nash laid the foundations of games theory, dissolved into
schizophrenia and emerged years later to claim a Nobel. Paul Hoffman trails
another unusual mind at work as he follows the footsteps of itinerant
mathematician Paul Erd枚s. A kind of bagman of maths, Erd枚s roamed the
world in search of discussants for maths. Innumerable papers followed.
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- Consilience, Little, Brown (22 August 1998);
- How The Mind Works, Allen Lane (24 January 1998);
- The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, Fourth Estate (1 August 1998);
- Mapping The Mind, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (12 October 1998);
- A Beautiful Mind,Faber & Faber (5 September 1998);
- One Renegade Cell, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (21 January 1999)
