Prof: Alan Turing Decoded

  • Dermot Turing
The History Press (2015) 9781841656434 | ISBN: 978-1-8416-5643-4

Computing pioneer Alan Turing has been justly and amply lauded, not least in these pages (see Nature 515, 195–196 (2014) and nature.com/turing). Now, a biography by his nephew, Dermot Turing, offers new sources and a refreshingly familial tone. We see the stubbornly original young Alan finding his way in maths and society; mentors such as Max Newman, who kick-started Turing's obsession with machines; the design of the electromechanical 'bombe' that helped to crack the Enigma cipher; and a sensitive reappraisal of Turing's suspected suicide. A measured portrait at ease with its subject.

The Cabaret of Plants: Botany and the Imagination

  • Richard Mabey
Profile (2015) 9780393239973 | ISBN: 978-0-3932-3997-3

As a celebrant of the botanical, Richard Mabey has few peers. He is on eloquent form in this portrayal of plants not as dully functional components of natural capital — a “biological proletariat” — but as unruly, autonomous and endlessly fascinating. This engaging scientific and cultural tour takes in ice-age engravings of plant forms; ancients and giants such as bristlecone pines and baobabs; the vast biodiversity of maize (corn); and, as touched on by plant scientist Ian Baldwin (Nature 522, 282–283; 2015), Erasmus Darwin's discovery of “irritability” in Mimosa pudica more than 200 years ago.

Moonstruck: How Lunar Cycles Affect Life

  • Ernest Naylor
Oxford University Press (2015) 9780198724216 | ISBN: 978-0-1987-2421-6

Circadian rhythms are dictated by sunlight and stitched into our genes. But what of the impact of moonlight on life? Marine biologist Ernest Naylor reveals that behavioural patterns linked to lunar phases have been found in animals such as the sea louse Eurydice. He also examines Moon-related spawning behaviour in marine species such as grunion and horseshoe crabs, and the sooty tern (Onychoprion fuscatus), with its breeding cycle of ten lunar months. For context, Naylor gives us the “full Moon”: the deep history, classical science and myth surrounding Earth's beautiful, enigmatic satellite.

The Unknown Universe: What We Don't Know About Time and Space in Ten Chapters

  • Stuart Clark
Head of Zeus (2015) 9781781855744 | ISBN: 978-1-7818-5574-4

It is no revelation that some data on the early Universe sit uneasily with the standard model of cosmology. But in his clued-up overview, astronomy journalist Stuart Clark's picture of the yawning gaps in our understanding of the cosmos is fuller than most. Clark tacks back and forth in the history of astronomy, intertwining the discoveries and theories of luminaries from astronomer William Herschel to cosmologist Roger Penrose with speculation on prevailing mysteries such as the nature of dark matter, dark energy and space-time.

A Foot in the River: Why Our Lives Change — and the Limits of Evolution

  • Felipe Fernández-Armesto
Oxford University Press (2015) 9780198744429 | ISBN: 978-0-1987-4442-9

Cultural evolutionists paint a partial picture of the speed of change in human cultures, argues historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto. His study, springing from a conference sponsored by the Templeton Foundation, calls for a new interdisciplinarity. He argues that although human culture is born of evolution, it also “changes independently of evolution” because it is a “projection of the human mind” — and its prodigious imaginative capacity.