The Cell … and The Atom

I was delighted to learn a few weeks ago that my book The Cell, published by the lovely people at Ivy Press, in association with Chicago University Press, is a finalist in the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s ‘Excellence in Science Books Prize’. The other finalists are amazing, so just being picked is a great honour. The result will be announced in February 2017.

In other news, the success of The Cell has prompted Ivy Press to commission me to write another book, this time in association with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We are only just beginning work on this, so it is many months away – but I am confident that we can tackle inspiring but normally complex scientific ideas with authority and clarity, as before. I am also confident that the book will look as lavish and inviting as The Cell does. I will publish updates further along the writing process; watch this space.

 

The incredible, golden, image on this blog post shows a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) visualisation of the surface of a sample of gold. The blobs are actual atoms. THe image is in the public domain, created by Erwin Rossen at the Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands, 2006. Note the image is falsely coloured – the STMs produce only contour maps of atomic surfaces, no colour.