If I remember rightly, I first entered the Daily Telegraph Young Science Writer of the year awards in 1991 after I returned from an extended trip to Australia, I wrote about the world’s biggest organism having the world’s biggest orgasm (the annual spawning of the Great Barrier Reef) and was a runner-up that year receiving a merit award for another article about sex although the title eludes me. It was my next entry that netted me the first prize. That year it was an item entitled “Not every sperm is sacred” about the ins and outs of fertilisation and the manual research carried out to study them.
At the awards ceremony in Southampton (1992’s BA meeting), Roger Highfield quoted me as saying I’d like to one day oust him from his science editor’s desk at the Telegraph. Well, that never happened, but I have been pretty active in science communication ever since. And, I do have a book out in November – Deceived Wisdom. Meanwhile, among my fellow winners are some well-known names in scicomms, journalism and the blogosphere in general:
Ed Yong (2007) Not Exactly Rocket Science
Yfke Van Bergen (2005) THES
Claire Bithell (2003) RI
Kate Ravilious (2000) Guardian
Lynn Dicks (1999) Freelance science writer
Ian Sample (1998) Guardian
Tom Wakeford (1996) Freelance science writer
Nick Flowers (1995) Freelance science writer
Katie Mantell (1995) SciDev.net
Sharon Ann Holgate (1994) Freelance science writer
Bob Ward (1993) Royal Society
Harriet Coles (1993) Nature
David Bradley (1992) Freelance science writer
Francesca Happe (1991)
Clive Oppenheimer (1990)
Reminded of all this having revisited Ed Yong’s post On the Origin of Science Writers.