John Gribbin


John R. Gribbin is a British science writer and astrophysicist. His subjects include quantum physics, human evolution, climate change and cosmology. He is a visiting fellow in astronomy at the University of Sussex. Best known for In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, he has also written biographies of Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Buddy Holly. Robert Macfarlane calls him "one of the finest and most prolific writers of popular science around."

Biography

John Gribbin graduated with his bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Sussex in 1966. He then earned his Master of Science degree in astronomy in 1967, also from the University of Sussex, and he earned his PhD in astrophysics from the University of Cambridge.
In 1968, Gribbin worked as one of Fred Hoyle's research students at the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy, and wrote a number of stories for New Scientist about the Institute's research and what were eventually discovered to be pulsars.
In 1974, Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann published The Jupiter Effect, which predicted that the alignment of the planets in a quadrant on one side of the Sun on 10 March 1982 would cause gravitational effects that would trigger earthquakes in the San Andreas Fault, possibly wiping out Los Angeles and its suburbs.
Gribbin distanced himself from The Jupiter Effect in the 17 July 1980, issue of New Scientist magazine, stating that he had been "too clever by half".
In February 1982, he and Plagemann published The Jupiter Effect Reconsidered, claiming that the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption proved their theory true despite a lack of planetary alignment. In 1999, Gribbin repudiated it, saying "I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it."
In 1984, Gribbin published In Search of Schrödinger's Cat. Robert Macfarlane writes that it “was among the best of the first wave of physics popularisations to share in the success of Stephen Hawking’s multi-million-selling A Brief History of Time. Margaret Atwood – who was one of the writers, along with Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, and Tom Stoppard, to get very exited about the new physics – read it, assimilated it, and credited Gribbin warmly in the back of her subsequent novel,
Cat’s Eye.”
Gribbin's book was cited by BBC World News as an example of how to revive an interest in the study of mathematics.
Gribbin was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999.
In 2006, Gribbin took part in a BBC radio 4 broadcast as an "expert witness". Presenter Matthew Parris discussed with Professor Kathy Sykes and Gribbin whether Albert Einstein "really was a 'crazy genius.
At the 2009 World Conference of Science Journalists, the Association of British Science Writers presented Gribbin with their Lifetime Achievement award.

Critical response to Gribbin's writings

The Spectator praised Science: A History as "the product of immense learning, and a lifetime spent working out how to write in a vivacious way about science and scientists".
Henry Gee, a senior editor at Nature, described Gribbin as "one of the best science writers around".
A review of The Universe: A Biography in the journal Physics World praised his skill in explaining difficult ideas.
A Wall Street Journal review of Flower Hunters described the writing as "pedestrian", with plenty of domestic detail but a failure to convey a larger cultural context. It stated that the book's chapter-length biographical sketches are too often superficial, and criticised the book for glaring omissions of prominent plant collectors.
In a review of The Reason Why, the Times Higher Education states that Gribbin writes on speculative matters and presents some of his theories without supporting evidence, but noted his comprehensive research and lyrical writing.

Selected bibliography

Astronomy

  • Astronomy for the Amateur, Macmillan,
  • Our Changing Universe: The New Astronomy, Dutton,
  • White Holes: Cosmic Gushers in the Universe, Delacorte Press/E. Friede,
  • Timewarps, Delacorte Press/E. Friede,
  • The Death of the Sun, Dell Publishing
  • Future Worlds, Springer,
  • Spacewarps: Black Holes, White Holes, Quasars, and the Universe, Delta,
  • The Omega Point: The Search for the Missing Mass and the Ultimate Fate of the Universe , Bantam,
  • Blinded by the Light: The Secret Life of the Sun, Bantam,
  • In Search of the Edge of Time: Black Holes, White Holes, Worm Holes, Bantam Books,
  • Companion to the Cosmos, John and Mary Gribbin, Little:
  • The Case of the Missing Neutrinos: And Other Phenomena of the Universe, Fromm Intl.
  • Watching the Universe, Constable,
  • Stardust: Supernovae and Life: The Cosmic Connection
  • Hyperspace: The Universe and Its Mysteries, DK ADULT,
  • The Universe: A Biography, Allen Lane,
  • Galaxies: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, USA.
  • From Here to Infinity: The Royal Observatory Greenwich Guide to Astronomy, National Maritime Museum, ; republished in 2009 as From Here to Infinity: A Beginner's Guide to Astronomy, Sterling
  • Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique, John Wiley & Sons,
  • "", Scientific American, vol. 319, no. 3, pp. 94–99.

    Biology

  • In Search of the Double Helix, McGraw-Hill,
  • The Redundant Male: Is Sex Irrelevant in the Modern World? Paladin,
  • The One Percent Advantage: The Sociobiology of Being Human, Blackwell Publishers,
  • Children of the Ice: Climate and Human Origins, Blackwell Publishers
  • Being Human: Putting People in an Evolutionary Perspective, J.M.Dent & Sons
  • The Mating Game, Barnes and Noble,
  • The First Chimpanzee: In Search of Human Origins, Barnes and Noble,

    Children's books on science

  • Time and the Universe Hodder & Stoughton,
  • Eyewitness: Time & Space DK Children,
  • Big Numbers: A Mind Expanding Trip to Infinity and Back , Wizard Books 2005 edition
  • How far is up? : Measuring the Size of the Universe , Icon Books, 2005 edition
  • The Science of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Introduction by Philip Pullman.
  • Time Travel for Beginners, Hodder Children's,

    Cosmology

  • In Search of the Big Bang, Bantam,
  • Cosmic Coincidences: Dark Matter, Mankind, and Anthropic Cosmology, Bantam,
  • In the Beginning: The Birth of the Living Universe In the Beginning: After COBE and before the Big Bang, Bulfinch Press,
  • Origins: Our Place in Hubble's Universe, Constable and Robinson
  • The Search for Superstrings, Symmetry, and the Theory of Everything, Little, Brown and Company,
  • The Birth of Time: How Astronomers Measured the Age of the Universe, Yale University Press,
  • In Search of the Multiverse: Parallel Worlds, Hidden Dimensions, and the Ultimate Quest for the Frontiers of Reality, Wiley,
  • 13.8: The Quest to Find the True Age of the Universe and the Theory of Everything'', Icon Books,

    Environmental science

  • Our Changing Climate, Faber and Faber,
  • Forecasts, Famines, and Freezes: Climates and Man's Future, Wildwood House Ltd,
  • Our Changing Planet, Wildwood House Limited
  • Climatic Change, Cambridge University Press
  • The climatic threat: What's wrong with our weather?, Fontana
  • Climate and Mankind, Earthscan, 56 pp
  • This Shaking Earth Sidgwick & Jackson,
  • Weather Force: Climate and Its Impact on Our World, Putnam Pub Group,
  • Carbon Dioxide, Climate, and Man, Intl Inst for Environment, 64 pp.
  • Future Weather and the Greenhouse Effect, Delacorte Press,
  • Weather, Macdonald Education, 48 pp.
  • The Breathing Planet Blackwell Publishers,
  • The Hole in the Sky: Man's Threat to the Ozone Layer Bantam,
  • Winds of Change, Hodder Arnold,
  • Hothouse Earth: The Greenhouse Effect and Gaia, Random House,
  • Too Hot to Handle? Greenhouse Effect, Corgi,
  • Watching the Weather, Trafalgar Square,

    General Science

  • Almost Everyone's Guide to Science: The Universe, Life, and Everything, Yale University Press,
  • Get a Grip on New Physics, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London.
  • The Little Book of Science, Barnes and Noble,
  • Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order To Chaos And Complexity, Random House, 2004,

    History of Science

  • Science: A History 1543–2001, Gardners Books, , Random House,
  • Annus Mirabilis: 1905, Albert Einstein, and the Theory of Relativity, Chamberlain Bros.
  • The Fellowship: The Story of a Revolution, Allen Lane,
  • History of Western Science, 1543-2001, Folio Society, London .
  • Flower Hunters, Oxford University Press,
  • Einstein's Masterwork: 1915 and the General Theory of Relativity, Pegasus Books
  • ''On The Origin of Evolution: Tracing 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea' from Aristotle to DNA''

    Quantum physics

  • In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality, Bantam Books,
  • Schrödinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality, Back Bay Books,
  • Q Is for Quantum: An Encyclopedia of Particle Physics, Free Press,
  • Quantum Physics , Dorling Kindersley,
  • La physique quantique, Pearson Education,
  • Computing with Quantum Cats: From Colossus to Qubits, Prometheus Books,
  • Six Impossible Things: The 'Quanta of Solace' and the Mysteries of the Subatomic World, Icon Books,