The short list of nominees for a prominent science-writer award in existence since 1988, the 2015 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books, was recently announced, as a release noted.

The author nominees are being hailed for bringing science into popular culture, as well as for covering science intelligently and on the human level, said the release. Nominee books must have been published in English. 

"While these books vary widely in their subject matter, they all excel at telling the human story, making science accessible and real without dumbing it down. Whether it's through Gaia Vince's reports of her ecological Adventures in the Anthropocene, finding out what it's like to work at the Large Hadron Collider in Smashing Physics, or Bellos's infectious enthusiasm in Alex Through the Looking-Glass, these books provide wonderfully engaging entry routes into complex topics," noted chairman of the judges Ian Stewart, a mathematician and co-author of the Science of Discworld series with Terry Pratchett and Jack Cohen, according to a release.

The books on the short list are:

The Man Who Couldn't Stop by David Adam (Picador)
Alex Through the Looking-Glass: How Life Reflects Numbers and Numbers Reflect Life by Alex Bellos (Bloomsbury)
Smashing Physics: Inside the World's Biggest Experiment by Jon Butterworth (Headline)
Life's Greatest Secret: The Story of the Race to Crack the Genetic Code by Matthew Cobb (Profile)
Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology by Johnjoe Mcfadden and Professor Jim Al-Khalili (Bantam Press)
Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet we Made by Gaia Vince (Chatto & Windus)

Other judges include a science broadcaster and author, and an award-winning novelist. The winner will be crowned on September 24, receiving roughly $39,000 in prize money, said the release.

The Royal Society, a widely respected fellowship of mostly British and Irish scientists, was founded in 1660.

In case you'd like information for nominating books next year, click here. 

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