Annal:2002 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science & Technology
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 2002. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science & Technology
- Nonfiction books
- Nonfiction authors
- Science/Technology books
- Science/Technology authors.
Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA
- 2002 LATimes–Sci/Tech winner
- 2002 Whitbread-Biography shortlist
- Score: 16.52
In March 1953, Maurice Wilkins of King’s College, London, announced the departure of his obstructive colleague Rosalind Franklin to rival Cavendish Laboratory scientist Francis Crick. But it was too late. Franklin’s unpublished data and crucial photograph of DNA had already been seen by her competitors at the Cambridge University lab. With the aid of these, plus their own knowledge, Watson and Crick discovered the structure of the molecule that genes are composed of—DNA, the secret of life. Five years later, at the age of thirty-seven, after more brilliant…
Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection
- 2002 LATimes–Sci/Tech finalist
- Score: 6.52
We take it for granted today that we should kiss our children, hug our friends, and comfort our partners. But until recently, the “experts” thought otherwise. In fact, in the early 20th century, affection between parents and children was very much discouraged—psychologists thought it would create needy and demanding offspring; doctors were convinced it would spread infectious disease. It took a revolution in psychology to overturn these beliefs, and prove that a loving touch not only didn’t harm babies but in fact ensured their emotional and intellectual…
Of Moths and Men: An Evolutionary Tale
- 2002 LATimes–Sci/Tech finalist
- Score: 6.52
Mutant moths and feuding scientists—the real story behind the most famous experiment in twentieth-century evolutionary biology.
As almost every high school biology student once learned, the peppered moths of England were the most renowned insects in the world. Featured in nearly every science textbook, they acquired their fame through the pioneering work of H. B. D. Kettlewell, a British physician and amateur lepidopterist who went into the woods in the 1950s to use this population of moths to capture “evolution in action.” He wanted—needed—to prove that the…
- 2002 LATimes–Sci/Tech finalist
- Score: 6.52
Homer called salt a divine substance. Plato described it as especially dear to the gods. Today we take it for granted; however, as Mark Kurlansky so brilliantly relates in this world-encompassing book, salt-the only rock we eat-has shaped civilization from the very beginning. Its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of mankind.
Until about 100 years ago, when modern geology revealed how prevalent it is, salt was one of the most sought-after commodities, for without it humans and animals could not live. Salt has often been considered so…
The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story
- 2002 LATimes–Sci/Tech finalist
- Score: 6.52
“The bard of biological weapons captures the drama of the front lines.”—Richard Danzig, former secretary of the navy
The first major bioterror event in the United States-the anthrax attacks in October 2001-was a clarion call for scientists who work with “hot” agents to find ways of protecting civilian populations against biological weapons. In The Demon in the Freezer, his first nonfiction book since The Hot Zone, a #1 New York Times bestseller, Richard Preston takes us into the heart of Usamriid, the United States Army Medical Research…
