by Heidi Norman
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ELMO KEEP is an Australian writer and journalist who writes broadly on the intersection of technology, media, money and the creative industries for a variety of local and international publications including Matter, The Awl, The Age, The Monthly, The Saturday Paper, Meanjin Quarterly, The Rumpus and elsewhere. Her first book-length work of non-fiction is forthcoming with Scribe. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
CHRISTINE KENNEALLY is an award-winning journalist and author. Her book The Invisible History of the Human Race was shortlisted for the 2015 Stella Prize. Kenneally is a contributing editor to BuzzFeed News and has written for The New Yorker, the New York Times, Slate, Time, New Scientist, The Monthly and other publications. She has a PhD in linguistics from Cambridge University and a BA (Hons) in English and Linguistics from Melbourne University.
WILLIAM LAURANCE is a Distinguished Research Professor and Australian Laureate at James Cook University in Cairns, Queensland. A tropical conservation biologist, he is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences and former President of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation. He has won many prestigious international awards, including the Heineken Environment Prize and BBVA Frontiers in Ecology and Conservation Award. In 2015 the Zoological Society of London named him ‘Conservationist of the Year’.
DYANI LEWIS is a freelance science writer based in Melbourne. She has a PhD in plant genetics, but now thrives on the cornucopia of science she can explore having ditched the pipettes and microscopes. Her writing has appeared in Science, Nature Medicine, Cosmos magazine, the ABC online and others. Dyani is a regular co-host on Triple R’s Einstein a Go-Go radio show and has hosted and produced science episodes for Up Close, the University of Melbourne’s podcast.
GERAINT LEWIS was born in Old South Wales, educated in the UK, and is a cosmologist at the University of Sydney. Through his research, he seeks to uncover some of the universe’s biggest mysteries, especially the nature of the dark matter and dark energy which control our cosmic expansion. His research includes gravitational lensing, galactic archaeology, and large-scale structure, and his favourite force is gravity.
JOHN LONG collected fossils as a child in Melbourne. After graduating with a PhD from Monash University in 1984, he became Curator in Vertebrate Palaeontology at the WA Museum, then Head of Sciences at Museum Victoria, finally and Vice President at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, before becoming Strategic Professor in Palaeontology at Flinders University. Author of some 28 books, non-fiction and fiction, John writes regularly for The Conversation and Australasian Science magazine.
TIM LOW is a biologist, environmental consultant and prizewinning best-selling author of seven books about nature and conservation. His book Feral Future inspired the formation of a non-governmental organisation, the Invasive Species Council, which Tim spoke about at the 18th Global Biodiversity Forum in Mexico. He has served on the Australian environment minister’s advisory committee, and wrote a column for Nature Australia magazine for 20 years. His most recent book is Where Song Began.
IAN LUNT loves the Australian bush. He worked as an Associate Professor in Vegetation Ecology at Charles Sturt University for many years, where he undertook extensive research on the ecology and conservation of endangered ecosystems. Recently Ian changed career paths to focus on writing about conservation science for a wider audience. He writes regularly about ecology on his blog, Ecology for Australia, at
JENNY MARTIN is a Professor of Structural Biology at the University of Queensland. She trained as a pharmacist in Melbourne and undertook her DPhil at Oxford University. Jenny is a recent ARC Australian Laureate Fellow and a current NHMRC Research Fellow. Her research is devoted to the structure and function of proteins involved in health and disease. She is passionate about gender equity and diversity.
JANE MCCREDIE is an award-winning journalist, former science publisher and the author of a book on the science of sex and gender, Making Girls and Boys (NewSouth, 2011). She is currently executive director of the NSW Writers’ Centre and writes a weekly blog on medicine for the Medical Journal of Australia’s electronic sister publication,
FIONA MCMILLAN is a science writer and blogger based in Brisbane. Her work has appeared in Cosmos magazine and she currently writes about immunology, cancer and genomics for the University of Queensland Diamantina Institute. Fiona has a BSc in physics and a PhD in biophysics. She has researched distant stars, extremophiles and the architecture of proteins, clocking many midnights at telescopes, lab benches, and the occasional particle accelerator. Her science blog Luminous can be found at
JAMES MITCHELL CROW is deputy editor of Cosmos magazine. A chemist by training, James began his science-writing career with Chemistry World magazine, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK, before joining New Scientist, where he worked in London as a features editor. In 2010 he left the UK to move to Australia, where he began writing freelance for various publications, including Nature. In May 2013 he joined the team at Cosmos.
SARINA NOORDHUIS-FAIRFAX is a Sydney-born artist and writer. She holds degrees in Biomedical Science (University of Technology, Sydney) and Fine Arts (National Art School, Sydney), and is currently a PhD candidate in the School of Art at the Australian National University. A curator in the Australian Prints and Drawings department at the National Gallery of Australia, Sarina lives with her husband and two young children in a house full of books.
CLARE PAIN has loved science since childhood, when she avidly followed the Apollo missions and spent her time looking for fossils, watching tadpoles, growing crystals and star-gazing. In her early twenties she freelanced for New Scientist magazine as a hobby. She pursued a range of other careers before deciding to concentrate on science and medical writing in 2011. Clare enjoys writing about all areas of science, but has a particular soft spot for neuroscience.
GINA PERRY is a psychologist, writer, and author of Behind the Shock Machine: The untold story of the notorious Milgram psychology experiments (Scribe, 2013). She has written for publications including The Age, The Australian, Cosmos and The Conversation and co-produced the ABC Radio National documentary about the obedience experiments, ‘Beyond the Shock Machine’, which won the Silver World Medal for a history documentary in the 2009 New York Festivals radio awards. She was runner-up for the 2013 Bragg UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing.
JOHN PICKRELL is an award-winning journalist, editor of Australian Geographic and author of Flying Dinosaurs. He has worked in London, Washington DC and Sydney and written for publications including New Scientist, Science, Science News, Cosmos, National Geographic and Scientific American. A three-time finalist in the Australian Museum Eureka prizes, he has won an Earth journalism award and has been featured in Best Australian Science Writing in 2011 and 2014. Find him on Twitter @john_pickrell.
DAVID ROLAND has a PhD in clinical psychology. He is an honorary associate with the School of Medicine, University of Sydney; a member of the Australian Psychological Society; and is one of the founders of Compassionate Mind Australia. His latest book is the memoir How I Rescued My Brain: A psychologist’s remarkable recovery from stroke and trauma. David is a public speaker, musician, and advocate for mental health and disability issues.
JOHN ROSS is a science and higher education journalist with The Australian. He has won numerous awards for his reporting on tertiary education. He has also written for Campus Review and freelanced for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Good Weekend. He has also worked at various times as a musician, English teacher, casual scriptwriter, kitchen-hand, landscape labourer and sugar cane chipper. He swims every morning, drinks too much coffee and plays Galician bagpipes quite badly.
MANU SAUNDERS is an ecologist at Charles Sturt University’s Institute for Land, Water & Society. Her research interests include plant-pollinator interactions, and the role of insect communities in building ecosystem resilience. Prior to embarking on her scientific c
areer, she studied and worked in literature and communications. She has published a number of popular science articles on her research, and shares her passion for ecology through her long-running blog ‘Ecology is not a dirty word’.
MICHAEL SLEZAK is an award-winning science reporter and New Scientist magazine’s correspondent in Australasia. He writes about everything from Higgs bosons and cane toads to psychoactive drugs and climate change. Before working at New Scientist, Michael was a medical journalist. Before that he studied philosophy of science, spending a lot of time thinking about the nature of time, thermodynamics and causality.
BRIDIE SMITH is the science editor, leading the science and environment reporting team at The Age. Her science reporting has won multiple awards, including the Melbourne Press Club Quill for best use of digital or social media. Since joining The Age in 2001, she has covered a variety of rounds including general news, consumer affairs and education. She has covered science since 2008. Bridie has a bachelor of arts with first class honours in history from Monash University.
ADAM SPENCER won the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Raw Comedy Championship in 1996 while doing a Maths PhD at Sydney University. He went on to host the triple j breakfast show with Wil Anderson before graduating to 702 ABC Sydney where he secured record ratings for eight years. His TV credits include ‘The Glasshouse’, ‘Good News Week’ and ‘Sleek Geeks’. His 2013 TED talk at Long Beach California on Prime Numbers is a geek comedy classic and has had over 1.5 million views. Adam’s recent book is Adam Spencer’s Big Book of Numbers (2014). He lives on the NSW Central Coast with his family.
DANIEL STACEY is a reporter with the Wall Street Journal in Sydney. His work in print and film has won a number of awards, including an Emmy for the feature documentary Saddam’s Road to Hell which he associate-produced, and citation in the 2009 Utne Independent Press Awards for International Coverage given to The New Statesman. In 2014 he launched the ABC’s first tablet magazine, White Paper.
GILLIAN TERZIS is an editor of the Melbourne-based literary journal The Lifted Brow and a writer interested in the intersection of technology and culture. Her work has appeared in national and international publications including The Saturday Paper, The Atlantic, The Australian, Foreign Policy and The Economist, among others.
WENDY ZUKERMAN is a science journalist and producer for Radio National. She is the creator and host of the ABC podcast Science Vs, regular contributor to The Saturday Paper and regularly discusses science on triple j and 702 ABC Sydney. Wendy has previously worked on ABC’s Catalyst and The Checkout. She was the Asia Pacific reporter for New Scientist magazine.
Acknowledgments
‘All dressed up for Mars and nowhere to go’ by Elmo Keep was published on Matter
‘The vanishing writers’ by Fiona McMillan was published on her blog Luminous
‘I, wormbot: The next step in artificial intelligence’ by Gillian Terzis was published in The Saturday Paper on 14 February 2015.
‘It’s all in your mind: The feeling of “wetness” is an illusion’ by Jesse Hawley was first published on Think Inc.
‘Love bug’ by Wendy Zukerman was published in The Saturday Paper on 23 September 2014.
‘Light’ by Sarina Noordhuis-Fairfax was first published by Relative Constructions in The Poetic Lens exhibition catalogue, 2014.
‘Playing God’ by Bridie Smith was published in the Good Weekend magazine and online on 26 September 2014.
‘Job description’ by Alice Gorman was published in TheArchaeologist, Winter issue 2015.
‘The past may not make you feel better’, from The Invisible History of the Human Race by Christine Kenneally, copyright © 2014 by Christine Kenneally. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC and Black Inc.
‘Maths explains how lobsters swim’ by Clare Pain was published online by ABC Science
‘Global “roadmap” shows where to put roads without costing the earth’ by William Laurance was first published on The Conversation
‘Messages from Mungo’ by John Pickrell was published in Australian Geographic magazine, November 2014.
‘Uncharted waters’ by Daniel Stacey was published in the WallStreet Journal on 31 July 2014. Reprinted with permission of the Wall Street Journal. Copyright © 2014 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
‘Field guide to the future’ by Ian Lunt was published on his blog Ecology for Australia
‘How I rescued my brain’ by David Roland is an extract from his book How I Rescued My Brain, published by Scribe on 23 July 2014.
‘Small mammals vanish in northern Australia’ by Dyani Lewis was published in Science on 5 September 2014.
‘Will a statin a day really keep the doctor away?’ by Elizabeth Finkel was published in Cosmos magazine on 29 December 2014.
‘An uneasy alliance’ by Elizabeth Bryer was published in Kill YourDarlings in July 2014.
‘Aliens versus predators: The toxic toad invasion’ by Michael Slezak was published in New Scientist magazine on 25 April 2014. © 2014 Reed Business Information – UK. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.
‘What shall we teach the children’ by George Clark was published on his website Australian Poetry and Wine
‘Why aren’t we dead yet?’ by Idan Ben-Barak is an extract from his book Why Aren’t We Dead Yet?, published by Scribe on 28 July, 2014.
‘Robots on a roll’ by James Mitchell Crow was published in Cosmos magazine in October 2014.
‘Honest placebos’ by Jane McCredie was published on MJA Insight
‘Imagine there’s new metrics (it’s easy if you try)’ by Jenny Martin was first published on her blog cubistcrystal
‘The women who fell through the cracks of the Universe’ by Lauren Fuge was published in On Dit on 12 August 2014.
‘Beating the odds’ by Trent Dalton was published in The WeekendAustralian Magazine on 7 March 2015.
‘Where’s the proof in science? There is none.’ by Geraint Lewis was published on The Conversation
‘Germ war breakthrough’ by John Ross was published in TheAustralian on 21 January 2015.
‘Lost in a floral desert’ by Manu Saunders was published in Wildlife Australia in March 2015.
‘Revisiting Milgram’s shocking obedience experiments’ by Nick Haslam and Gina Perry was published on The Conversation
‘Social robots are coming’ by Wilson da Silva was published in Cosmos magazine on 6 October 2014.
‘How dust affects climate, health and … everything’ by Tim Low was published in The Weekend Australian Magazine on 7 February 2015.
‘Copulate to populate: Ancient Scottish fish did it sideways’ by John Long was published on The Conversation
‘The mind of Michio Kaku’ by Tim Dean was published in Cosmos magazine on 21 July 2014.
In 2012, NewSouth Publishing launched a new annual prize for the best short non-fiction piece on science written for a general audience. The Bragg UNSW Press Prize is named in honour of Australia’s first Nobel laureates, William Henry Bragg and his son William Lawrence Bragg. The Braggs won the 1915 Nobel Prize for physics for their work on the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays. Both scientists led enormously productive lives and left a lasting legacy. William Henry Bragg was a firm believer in making science popular among young people, and his Christmas lectures for students were described as models of clarity and intellectual excitement.
The shortlisted entries for the 2015 prize are included in this anthology.
For the very first time in 2015 the successful Bragg Prize, which recognises excellence in science communication, has opened a special category for high school students. Science enthusiasts in years 7–10 were invited to submit an essay of up to 800 words on the topic of mind-blowing experiments.
A joint initiative of UNSW Press, UNSW Science and Refraction Media, with support from the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund, the Prize is designed to encourage and celebrate the next generation of science writers, researchers and leaders. For an aspiring university Dean of Science or Walkley Award-winning journalist, this could be the first entry on their CV.
The winner receives a $500 JB HiFi voucher, publication in CSIRO’s Double Helix magazine and on the Cosmos website, and an invitation to the launch of The Best Australian Science Writing 2015 in Sydney. Two runners-up each receive a voucher worth $250. Schools whose students enter the prize receive a copy of this book.
The names of the winners and details about next year’s competition are available on the NewSouth Publishing website:
The Bragg UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing
2015 Shortlist
Idan Ben-Barak Why aren’t we dead yet?
Trent Dalton Beating the odds
Christine Kenneally The past may not make you feel better
James Mitchell Crow Robots on a roll
John Pickrell Messages from Mungo
