Books

Books to which I've contributed

"A Passion for Science: Stories of Discovery and Invention"
Edited by Suw Charman-Anderson

A collection of tales of women who, often in the face of huge barriers, broke into the field of science, technology, mathematics or engineering. Some made groundbreaking discoveries; others risked their lives in wartime. Each chapter is written by a different volunteer - mine is about my favourite astronomer, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. At present, "A Passion for Science" is only available as an ebook, put together to fund Ada Lovelace Day, but we hope to make it available in paperback soon.

I've written more about this book here. You can also follow Suw Charman-Anderson and Ada Lovelace Day on Twitter.

"Reinventing Discovery"
Michael Nielsen

This is a fascinating manifesto for "open science": the idea that publicly funded science should not be locked up behind paywalls in journals, but accessible to everybody. This book argues that scientists are only rewarded by published papers, which can discourage the publication of valuable data and large-scale collaboration. It's also about how scientists can more effectively share their expertise, and how laypeople can work together, using their many and varied skills and much more quickly finding colleagues and teachers of special skills where needed. One chapter is about citizen science, using Galaxy Zoo's discovery of the peas as a special study. Michael Nielsen used a piece of my writing on the process leading up to the peas' discovery - a blog which resulted from my very in-depth trawl through over a year's work on the forum to state who should be credited for what!

You can buy the book here, read the first chapter for free here, and follow Michael Nielsen on Twitter.

"A Neutron Walks Into A Bar"
The Science140 team: Humphrey Jones, Aoibhinn Ni Shuilleabhain, Maria Delaney and Paul O'Dwyer.


#Science140 was a Twitter project to crowdsource science facts - and, as you can see from the title, science jokes - written in 140 characters. It has become a very enjoyable little book, with Cystic Fibrosis Research Association of Ireland receiving the royalties. Several hundred of us contributed; I was among the top ten - that's what comes of studying four different subjects at university and reading a lot of popular science! My favourite joke from it is: How many moles in a guacamole? Avocado's number.

The webpage recommends lots of places you can get this!

"Tweet Treats"
Jane Travers

This is another delightful tweet-sourced charity book, with all royalties going to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). Jane Travers asked for tweeted recipes of no more than 140 characters, and managed to get exactly 140 recipes from celebrities. They range from drinks to salads to puddings to fancy meat dishes to jokes to hints and little things like special salad dressings. An enthusiastic cook, I pelted her with short recipes, as did many others - especially chocoholics, she noticed. Warning: reading this book will make you extremely hungry!

You can follow Jane Travers on Twitter and buy Tweet Treats here.