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A search for the scientific basis for happiness has beaten the tale of the world's most famous tortoise and the history of humans in Britain to be named this year's best science book.
Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert received the prestigious Royal Society Prize for Stumbling into Happiness, which questions the idea that any of us know what happiness actually is, never mind how to achieve or maintain it.
Other shortlisted books included Homo Britannicus by palaeontologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum: an epic tale of humans on the British Isles, starting when the very first turned up more than 700,000 years ago.
An early favourite for the prize had been Lonesome George by Henry Nicholls, which tells the story of a 90kg, 80-year-old tortoise on the island of Pinta in the Galapagos. He is thought to be the sole remaining survivor of his species and scientists have spent decades trying to find ways of reproducing him in a bid to save his kind from extinction.
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Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert received the prestigious Royal Society Prize for Stumbling into Happiness, which questions the idea that any of us know what happiness actually is, never mind how to achieve or maintain it.
Other shortlisted books included Homo Britannicus by palaeontologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum: an epic tale of humans on the British Isles, starting when the very first turned up more than 700,000 years ago.
An early favourite for the prize had been Lonesome George by Henry Nicholls, which tells the story of a 90kg, 80-year-old tortoise on the island of Pinta in the Galapagos. He is thought to be the sole remaining survivor of his species and scientists have spent decades trying to find ways of reproducing him in a bid to save his kind from extinction.
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