Philip Ball

Philip Ball (born 1962) is a British science writer.

For over twenty years he was an editor of the journal Nature, for which he continues to write regularly.

He is a regular contributor to Prospect magazine and a columnist for Chemistry World and Nature Materials.

He is the author of many books on science and its interactions with the wider culture, as well as a novel.

He has contributed to publications ranging from New Scientist to the New York Times, The Guardian, the Financial Times, and New Statesman.

He has broadcast on many occasions on radio and TV, and is a co-presenter with Naomi Alderman of the history of science series Science Stories on BBC Radio 4.

Ball holds a degree in chemistry from Oxford and a doctorate in physics from Bristol University.

His book Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books.

It examines a wide range of topics including the business cycle, random walks, phase transitions, bifurcation theory, traffic flow, Zipf's law, Small world phenomenon, catastrophe theory, the Prisoner's dilemma.

The overall theme is one of applying modern mathematical models to social and economic phenomena.

Ball's Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another won the 2005 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books.

In 2006 Ball was the recipient of the American Chemical Society’s James T. Grady – James H. Stack award for interpreting chemistry to the public.

As of 2008 he lives in London.

Ball’s books are noted for their wide range of topics, from quantum chemistry to molecular biology, a history of Gothic cathedrals, a history of China, cultural histories of the concepts of unnaturalness and invisibility, and an examination of myths in modern literature.

In 2011, Ball published The Music Instinct in which he discusses how we make sense of sound and Music and emotion.

He outlines what is known and still unknown about how music has such an emotional impact, and why it seems indispensable to humanity.

He eamines the theory that music is emotively powerful partly due to its ability to mimic human expressivity and also through setting up expectations in pitch and harmony and then violating them.

Ball has written expensively on the interactions of science and art, and has written catalogue entries for a range of international artists, including Peter Randall Page, Bosco Sodi and Tomas Saraceno.

His book Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler (Bodley Head 2014) was on the shortlist for the 2014 prize.

Ball’s book Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Quantum Physics Is Different[18] (Bodley Head, 2018) was awarded the Physics World Book of the Year 2018 for his book Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Quantum Physics Is Different (Bodley Head, 2018)

In 2019 Ball won the Institute of Physics’ Kelvin Medal and Prize for communicating physics to the public.

He was awarded the Royal Society’s 2022 Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal for excellence in a subject relating to the history of science, philosophy of science or the social function of science.

Ball’s article “Should scientists run the country ” won the 2022 award from the Association of British Science Writers for the best Opinion piece