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Award Winning Science and Nature Books
131 books from 19 lists, 1854 to 2026
The Royal Society Science Book Prize exists to reward science writing that a reader with no training can follow, and its winners anchor this page. With them is the writing on evolution, climate and the natural world that won literary and non fiction prizes, which is where much of the best nature writing actually lands.
Books by prize
One shelf per list, newest first on each. The prize name opens its full list.
- 2026 Ars Poeticas
- 2019 Be With
- 2012 Life on Mars
- 1998 Black Zodiac
- 1984 American Primitive
- 1983 Selected Poems
- 1975 Turtle Island
- 1973 Up Country
- 1972 Collected Poems
- 1971 The Carrier of Ladders
- 1957 Things of This World
- 1956 Poems: North & South - A Cold Spring
- 1954 The Waking
- 1952 Collected Poems
- 2025 Our Brains, Our Selves: What a Neurologist's Patients Taught Him About the Brain
- 2024 A City on Mars
- 2023 An Immense World
- 2022 A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth
- 2021 Entangled Life
- 2020 Explaining Humans
- 2019 Invisible Women
- 2018 Inventing Ourselves
- 2017 Testosterone Rex
- 2016 The Invention of Nature
- 2015 Adventures in the Anthropocene
- 2014 Stuff Matters
- 2013 The Particle at the End of the Universe
- 2012 The Information
- 2011 The Wavewatcher's Companion
- 2010 Life Ascending
- 2009 The Age of Wonder
- 2008 Six Degrees
- 2007 Stumbling on Happiness
- 2006 Electric Universe
- 2005 Critical Mass
- 2004 A Short History of Nearly Everything
- 2003 Right Hand, Left Hand
- 2002 The Universe in a Nutshell
- 2001 Mapping the Deep
- 2000 The Elegant Universe
- 1999 The Man Who Loved Only Numbers
- 1997 The Wisdom of the Bones
- 1995 The Consumer's Good Chemical Guide
- 1994 The Language of the Genes
- 1993 The Making of Memory
- 1992 The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee
- 1991 Wonderful Life
- 1990 The Emperor's New Mind
- 1989 Bones of Contention
- 1988 Living with Risk
- 2024 Orbital
- 2023 Fire Weather
- 2018 Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy
- 2015 NeuroTribes
- 2014 H Is for Hawk
- 2009 Leviathan or, The Whale
- 2019 Amity and Prosperity
- 2015 The Sixth Extinction
- 2014 Toms River
- 2011 The Emperor of All Maladies
- 1999 Annals of the Former World
- 1998 Guns, Germs, and Steel
- 1995 The Beak of the Finch
- 1991 The Ants
- 1988 The Making of the Atomic Bomb
- 1982 The Soul of a New Machine
- 1980 Gödel, Escher, Bach
- 1979 On Human Nature
- 1978 The Dragons of Eden
- 1977 Beautiful Swimmers
- 1975 Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
- 1969 So Human an Animal
- 1966 Wandering Through Winter
- 2019 The Calculating Stars
- 2015 The Three-Body Problem
- 2010 The Windup Girl
- 2007 Rainbows End
- 2006 Spin
- 2003 Hominids
- 1997 Blue Mars
- 1994 Green Mars
- 1988 The Uplift War
- 1984 Startide Rising
- 1980 The Fountains of Paradise
- 1977 Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
- 1974 Rendezvous with Rama
- 1973 The Gods Themselves
- 1971 Ringworld
- 1969 Stand on Zanzibar
- 2019 The Overstory
- 1926 Arrowsmith
- 2018 Flights
- 2000 Soul Mountain
- 1944 The Long Journey
- 1927 Creative Evolution
- 1920 Growth of the Soil
- 1909 The Wonderful Adventures of Nils
- 2018 Where the Crawdads Sing
- 1997 Into Thin Air
- 1976 The Selfish Gene
- 2014 Annihilation
- 2012 2312
- 2000 Darwin's Radio
- 1993 Red Mars
- 1982 No Enemy But Time
- 1980 Timescape
- 1976 Man Plus
- 2014 Locomotive
- 2006 The Echo Maker
- 1996 Ship Fever and Other Stories
- 2006 The Worst Hard Time
- 1994 How We Die
- 1986 Arctic Dreams
- 1980 The Right Stuff
- 1979 The Snow Leopard
- 1955 The Measure of Man
- 1952 The Sea Around Us
- 1977 Doctor Rat
- 1854 Walden