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Georgina Ferry (1955-)

Georgina Ferry is a science writer who established herself first through writing in New Scientist magazine and broadcasting on BBC Radio, and more recently through her authorship of popular science books. From August 2000 until May 2007 she was Editor of Oxford Today, the alumni magazine of Oxford University.

Her book Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life (Granta, 1998; Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 2000), is the first biography of Britain's only female Nobel-prizewinning scientist. In February 2002 The Common Thread: A Story of Science, Politics, Ethics and the Human Genome, which she co-authored with Sir John Sulston, was published in the UK by Bantam Press; it is published in the US by Joseph Henry Press. A Computer Called LEO, her account of the world's first business computer completed half a century ago by J. Lyons & Co, was published by Fourth Estate in April 2003 (available in the US from Trafalgar Square Books). Ferry’s biography of Max Perutz, Nobel prizewinner and founder of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, is to be published by Chatto & Windus in July 2007.

Georgina Ferry was born in Hong Kong in 1955. She is a graduate of Oxford University, where she studied psychology and physiology at Lady Margaret Hall from 1973-76. She worked briefly in research and in scientific publishing before joining the staff of the weekly science magazine New Scientist as literary editor in 1979. She also contributed news and feature articles, specialising in the rapidly-advancing area of neuroscience. From 1982 until 1989 she worked as a freelance consultant to New Scientist, commissioning and writing features on neuroscience and also on women in science.

By this time she had become a regular presenter on BBC Radio 4’s weekly magazine programme Science Now. During the 1980s and 1990s she researched, wrote and presented a number of radio documentaries and series; she continues to broadcast occasionally on Radio 4 and on BBC World Service.

Ferry has lived in Oxford since 1981 with her husband and two sons. As well as writing, editing and broadcasting, she acts and directs in non-professional theatre, has chaired the parents' association of a large comprehensive school, and sails a Topper dinghy on the upper Thames.

Read more about:

Georgina Ferry at her website

Author photograph by Deborah Elliott

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