About the Author
TIM COULSON is Professor of Zoology at the University of Oxford. He has worked as an academic teaching biology for three decades and has published over two hundred peer-reviewed articles. Tim chose to study biology because he was drawn to its inherent complexity, as his desire was to become a specialist in complex systems. His teaching and research have been rewarded with international awards from the Royal Society, the British Ecological Society, the Swedish Oikos Society, the Zoological Society of London, Imperial College London, and the University of Oxford. Tim regularly gives interviews on the BBC, Sky, and Channel 4 as a talking head. Tim lives in Oxford, England.
Further Reading
Each chapter in the book describes what had to happen for us to exist. There is a lot that is not discussed. If any part of the book piques your interest and you wish to learn more, I provide details of a few of the very many texts I have read while researching this book. Each book goes into more detail than I was able to. Because popular science books tend to be on a specific science such as chemistry or physics, I do not group them by the chapter titles in this book.
History of Science
Grayling, A. C., The Frontiers of Knowledge: What We Know about Science, History and the Mind – And How We Know It, 2022, Penguin
Hossenfelder, Sabine, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, 2020, Basic Books
Kaku, Michio, The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything, 2022, Penguin
Robertson, Ritchie, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness 1680–1790, 2022, Penguin
Waldrop, M. Mitchell, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, 1993, Pocket Books
Wootton, David, The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution, 2016, Penguin
Wulf, Andrea, The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science, 2016, John Murray
Physics
Al-Khalili, Jim, The World according to Physics, 2020, Princeton University Press
Al-Khalili, Jim, Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed, 2012, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Carroll, Sean, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime, 2021, Oneworld Publications
Galfard, Christophe, The Universe in Your Hand: A Journey through Space, Time and Beyond, 2016, Pan
Hooper, Dan, At the Edge of Time: Exploring the Mysteries of Our Universe’s First Seconds, 2021, Princeton University Press
James, Tim, Fundamentaclass="underline" How Quantum and Particle Physics Explain Absolutely Everything (Except Gravity), 2019, Robinson
Rovelli, Carlo, Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, 2017, Penguin
Rovelli, Carlo, Helgoland: The Strange and Beautiful World of Quantum Physics, 2022, Penguin
Strogatz, Steven, Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe, 2019, Mariner Books
Chemistry
BBC Radio, In Their Element: How Chemistry Made the Modern World, 2020, BBC Audio
James, Tim, Elementaclass="underline" How the Periodic Table Can Now Explain (Nearly) Everything, 2018, Robinson
Lane, Nick, Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World, 2016, Oxford University Press
Pross, Addy, What Is Life? How Chemistry Becomes Biology, 2016, Oxford University Press
Astronomy and Earth Science
Cohen, Andrew, with Brian Cox, The Planets, 2019, William Collins
Gribbin, John, 13.8: The Quest to Find the True Age of the Universe and the Theory of Everything, 2016, Yale University Press
Hand, Kevin Peter, Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space, 2020, Princeton University Press
James, Tim, Astronomicaclass="underline" From Quarks to Quasars, the Science of Space at Its Strangest, 2020, Robinson
Loeb, Avi, Extraterrestriaclass="underline" The First Sign of Intelligent Life beyond Earth, 2021, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Emergence of Life
Deamer, David, Assembling Life: How Can Life Begin on Earth and Other Habitable Planets?, 2019, Oxford University Press
Kauffman, Stuart A., A World beyond Physics: The Emergence and Evolution of Life, 2019, Oxford University Press
Knoll, Andrew H., Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth, 2015, Princeton University Press
Knoll, Andrew H., A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters, 2023, Mariner Books
Nurse, Paul, What Is Life? Understand Biology in Five Steps, 2020, David Fickling Books
Evolution
Al-Khalili, Jim, and Johnjoe McFadden, Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology, 2015, Black Swan
Dawkins, Richard, and Yan Wong, The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life, 2017, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Gee, Henry, A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Chapters, 2022, Picador
Halliday, Thomas, Otherlands: A World in the Making, 2023, Penguin
Losos, Jonathan B., Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance and the Future of Evolution, 2018, Riverhead Books
Shubin, Neil, Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA, 2021, Oneworld Publications
Consciousness
Cobb, Matthew, The Idea of the Brain: A History, 2021, Profile Books
Godfrey-Smith, Peter, Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life, 2017, William Collins
Godfrey-Smith, Peter, Metazoa: Animal Minds and the Birth of Consciousness, 2021, William Collins
Hawkins, Jeff, A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence, 2022, Basic Books
Peterson, Jordan B., Maps of Meaning, 1999, Routledge
Seth, Anil, Being You: A New Science of Consciousness, 2022, Faber and Faber
Human History
Frankopan, Peter, The Earth Transformed: An Untold History, 2023, Bloomsbury Publishing
Graeber, David, and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, 2022, Penguin
Harari, Yuval Noah, Sapiens, 2015, Vintage
Higham, Tom, The World before Us: How Science Is Revealing a New Story of Our Human Origins, 2021, Viking
Honigsbaum, Mark, The Pandemic Century: 100 Years of Panic, Hysteria and Hubris, 2020, W. H. Allen