Stephen Jay Gould has won the Rhone-Poulenc prize of 拢10,000 for
a popular science book. His Wonderful Life (tipped to win by New 杏吧原创)
is an account of the discovery of tiny fossils in the Burgess Shale, in
British Columbia. These remains of jellyfish that died out about 500 million
years ago forced palaeontologists to reinterpret their ideas of evolution.
Fellow Americans Jerry Bishop and Michael Waldholz were runners-up with
Genome, an account of the people and policies that established the project
to map the human genome.
Other science book prizewinners were Fran Balkwill and Mic Rolph, who
won the COPUS/Science Museum prize, again of 拢10,000, for their cartoon
guides to the immune system and the body鈥檚 cells, Cell Wars and Cells Are
Us.
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Kipchak Johnson鈥檚 book, Worm鈥檚 Eye View, was highly commended.