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Four Way Interviews

Our four-way interviews give a quick insight into the current thinking of a popular science author.

September 2011 Lone Frank

Lone Frank is the author of The Neurotourist: Postcards from the edge of brain science. She holds a PhD in neurobiology and was previously a research scientist in the biotechnology industry. An award winning science journalist, she has written for many top publications. She lives in Copenhagen. Her latest book is My Beautiful Genome.

August 2011 Douglas Palmer

Douglas Palmer is a a science writer and lecturer on Earth Sciences for the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. He is the author of more than 20 books, most recently Earth: in 100 groundbreaking discoveries, and a regular contributor to New Scientist and Science magazines.

August 2011 Frank Ryan

Frank Ryan is a consultant physician and an innovative evolutionary biologist.  He has pioneered the concept of viruses as symbionts. Frank's new book for 2011 is Metamorphosis.

August 2011 Brian Switek

Brian Switek is a freelance science writer based out of Salt Lake City, Utah.  Written in Stone is his first book, and he is currently working on a follow-up titled A Date with a Dinosaur.

May 2011 David Linden David J. Linden is professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Maryland, USA. The author of more than ninety scientific papers and the acclaimed book The Accidental Mind, he also serves as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Neurophysiology.
March 2011 Angela Saini Angela Saini is an award-winning independent journalist based in London, and the author of Geek Nation, a journey through India, to find out whether the country is set to become the world's next scientific superpower.
March 2011 Sean Carroll Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. His papers on dark matter and dark energy, the physics of extra dimensions, and alternative theories of gravity have been widely praised. he is also one of the founders of the group blog cosmicvariance.com. His book on time and entropy is From Eternity to Here.
February 2011 Hugh Aldersey-Williams Hugh Aldersey-Williams studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge. He is the author of several books exploring science, design and architecture, and has curated exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Wellcome Collection. His latest book is Periodic Tales.
January 2011 Sam Kean Sam Kean spent years collecting mercury from broken thermometers as a child and now he is a writer in Washington D.C. He studied physics and English and his work has appeared in the New York Times magazine, Slate and New Scientist. His first book is The Disappearing Spoon.
December 2010 Justin Pollard Justin Pollard is a historical writer/consultant in film and TV. He is a researcher for the TV show QI and the author of five books. His most recent title is Boffinology - the real stories behind our greatest scientific discoveries.
November 2010 Piers Bizony Piers Bizony has written about aerospace and cosmology for a variety of magazines on both sides of the Atlantic, and has been shortlisted for the NASA/Eugene M. Emme Award for Astronautical Writing. He has written several books, the most recent of which is Science: the Definitive Guide.  
October 2010 Richard Elwes
Richard Elwes is a writer, teacher and researcher in Mathematics and a visiting fellow at the University of Leeds. Dr Elwes is passionate about the public understanding of maths, which he promotes at talks and on the radio. His more recent book is Maths 1001.
 
October 2010 Richard Cohen
Richard Cohen is a former publishing director of Hutchinson and Hodder & Stoughton. He has written for the Times, the Guardian, the Independent and most other leading London newspapers, and has appeared on BBC radio and television. He lives in New York City. His more recent book is Chasing the Sun.
September 2010 Paul Parsons
Paul Parsons is a contributor to Nature, New Scientist and the Daily Telegraph. He has appeared on radio and TV and was formerly editor of the award-winning BBC science magazine Focus. His books include the Royal Society Prize nominated The Science of Doctor Who and his most recent title, covering all science: Science 1001.
June 2010 Guy Deutscher
Guy Deutscher read Mathematics at Cambridge and went on to do a doctorate in Linguistics.
Formerly a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and of the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Languages in the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, he is an honorary Research Fellow at the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures in the University of Manchester.
May 2010 Peter Byrne
Northern California-based journalist Peter Byrne has an uncanny ability to mine reportable nuggets of graft and corruption out of mountains of government and corporate records — not to mention human sources. His recent book The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III: Multiple Universes, Mutual Assured Destruction, and the Meltdown of a Nuclear Family takes on a remarkable 20th century figure, his theories and his life.
May 2010 Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart recently retired as Professor of Mathematics at Warwick University and is a Fellow of the Royal Society. As an active research mathematician he published over 140 papers, but he is probably best known as a populariser of maths in a wide range of approachable books, and as co-author of the Science of Discworld books. His most recent title is Cows in the Maze.
April 2010 Glenn Murphy
Glenn Murphy received his masters in science communication from London’s Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine. He wrote his first book whilst managing the Explainer team at the Science Museum in London. In 2007 he moved to the United States. He now lives and works in North Carolina, with his wife Heather and an increasingly large and ill-tempered cat.
April 2010 Michael Brooks
Michael Brooks, who holds a PhD in quantum physics, is an author, journalist and broadcaster. He is a consultant at New Scientist, and the author of 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense and The Big Questions: Physics.
March 2010 Marcus Chown

Marcus Chown is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. He began his career as a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He has recently published Afterglow of Creation, a radical update of a book he wrote in the 1990s about the relic heat of the big bang fireball.

March 2010 Peter Forbes

Peter Forbes trained as a chemist and worked in pharmaceutical and natural history publishing. He became editor of the Poetry Society's Poetry Review and has often worked on the crossover of art and science, mostly recently on bio-inspired materials and on camouflage.

July 2009 Johnny Ball

Johnny Ball has written a number of books on mathematics for younger readers. He has long been a British TV favourite with shows like Think of a Number, which have made maths, science and technology accessible and fun.

June 2009 Arturo Sangalli

Arturo Sangalli has a PhD in mathematics and is the author of The Importance of Being Fuzzy and Pythagoras' Revenge. A freelance science journalist and writer, he has contributed many pieces to New Scientist.

April 2009 Patricia Fara

Patricia Fara has a degree in physics from Oxford University and a PhD in History of Science from London University. She now lectures in the History and Philosophy of Science department at Cambridge University, where she is the Senior Tutor at Clare College.

April 2009 Frank Close

Frank Close is a theoretical high energy particle physicist at Oxford University. He has given a wide range of public lectures, including the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 1993, and has written a number of popular science books.

November 2008 Simon Singh

Simon Singh is a freelance writer, science journalist, broadcaster, whose books include the phenomenally successful Fermat's Last Theorem, The Code Book, Big Bang and most recently Trick or Treatment? on alternative medicine.

November 2008 Ben Goldacre

Ben Goldacre is an award winning writer, broadcaster, and medical doctor who has written the weekly Bad Science column in the Guardian since 2003.

November 2008 Jo Marchant

Jo Marchant is a journalist specialising in science and history, currently the opinion editor at the leading science magazine New Scientist. Her book, Decoding the Heavens describes the discovery and investigation of the remarkable Antikythera Mechanism.

November 2007 Brian Clegg

Brian Clegg is the editor of the Popular Science website and has written books on subjects including light, Roger Bacon, infinity, Eadweard Muybridge and quantum entanglement. His latest title, The Global Warming Survival Kit is a practical guide to coping with the impact of climate change.

October 2007 Nick Arnold

Nick Arnold is one of the world's leading popularizers of science for a younger audience. His hugely successful Horrible Science series with Scholastic has brought the joy of science to many, many young readers.

August 2007 Ronald Mallett

Ronald Mallett is professor of physics at the University of Connecticut. In his book, The Time Traveller, he describes his motivation to become involved in science, and his fascinating work that may have brought him close to practical time travel.

July 2007 Surendra Verma

Surendra Verma has written a number of popular science books. His latest is Why Aren't They Here, exploring alien life and the reasons the aliens aren't knocking on our doors.

 
June 2007 Michael Hanlon

Michael Hanlon is one of Britain's most successful science writers. He has been Science Editor at the Daily Mail for many years, and has written three popular science books. His latest, Ten Questions Science Can't Answer Yet, received a 5 star review from this website.

 
May 2007 Len Fisher

Len Fisher is the author of Weighing the Soul and How to Dunk a Doughnut.

December 2006 Richard Platt

Richard Platt has recently published [Would You Believe] Cobwebs Stop Wounds Bleeding and Marzipan Contains Cyanide.

 
November 2006 Mark Hanson

Mark Hanson has recently published Mismatch, a description of the way human beings have become a poor fit for our environment because of the way the modern world is out of tune with our evolved bodies.

 

 

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Last update 16 April 2011