Philip Ball
Philip Ball is a freelance science writer. He trained as a chemist at the University of Oxford, and as a physicist at the University of Bristol.
He worked previously at Nature for over 20 years, first as an editor for physical sciences and then as a consultant editor. His writings on science for the popular press have covered topical issues ranging from cosmology to the future of molecular biology.
Philip is the author of many popular books on science, including H2O: A Biography of Water, Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour, The Music Instinct and Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything. His book Critical Mass won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books, while Serving the Reich was shortlisted for the Royal Society Winton Science Book Prize in 2014.
Philip writes regularly for publications including Nature, New Scientist, the Guardian, the Financial Times, Prospect and New Statesman. He has broadcast on many occasions on radio and TV, and is a presenter of Science Stories on BBC Radio 4. He was awarded the William Thomson, Lord Kelvin Medal and Prize in 2019 by the Institute of Physics for communication of physics, and the American Chemical Society James T Grady–James H Stack Award in 2006 for interpreting chemistry for the public. He holds honorary degrees from Bristol University and Union College, NY.
OpinionA vaccine for all seasons?
Phase 1 clinical trials have begun on a candidate that could work against a wide range of flu viruses
- Opinion
Hidden details in iconic portrait of Lavoisiers reveal fears of coming revolution
As the French Revolution neared the Lavoisiers were reimagined as scientific progressives rather than out of touch aristocrats
- Research
Observing the life and death of a single excited-state molecule
Individual pentacene’s triplet lifetime – and how it is cut short by a nearby oxygen – measured with atomic resolution
- Research
Tentacled droplets swim with stored heat energy
Microdroplets with retractable tendrils could help researchers understand how bacteria move
- Opinion
Science is political
The personal values held by scientists should influence the accolades they receive
- Research
Tiniest Turing patterns found in atomically thin bismuth
Nanoscale stripes and networks that resemble animal markings could be used to make quantum wires
- News
Race to understand Sars-CoV-2 variants amid fears virus might evade vaccines
Biochemical basis behind coronavirus variants’ success could hold key to defeating them
- Opinion
Furin fundamentals
There’s no direct evidence for the lab leak hypothesis – and the biochemistry of the virus might not tell us much about it
- Opinion
Learning the language of chemistry
Artificial intelligence works out the grammar of chemical reactions
- Opinion
Rewards based on priority drive unnecessary competition
The story of Crispr illustrates how a focus on patents and publications can cause good people to act in unsavoury ways
- Opinion
When does a hydrogen bond become a covalent bond?
Ultrafast infrared spectroscopy probes the character of the short, strong bonds in HF2–
- Opinion
Behind the screens of AlphaFold
Predicting protein structure doesn’t necessarily say much about function
- Feature
How does a cell know what kind of cell it should be?
Philip Ball investigates how cells use condensed ‘blobs’ to collect the molecules involved in regulating genes
- Research
New ordering of elements could help find materials with promising properties
Universal sequence of elements index uses atomic radii and electronegativity to make predictions about simple compounds
- Opinion
Pseudoscience moving into the mainstream
Pseudoscience now has more serious consequences than a few bent spoons
- Opinion
The ethical debate around Crispr
The gene editing technique deserves its Nobel Prize, but we should continue to interrogate how it is used
- Opinion
The true value of scientific holy grails
It comes from the journey, not the goal writes Philip Ball
