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Chris Woodford
Born (1966-12-13) 13 December 1966 (age 57)
Birmingham
OccupationAuthor
LanguageEnglish
Alma materUniversity of Cambridge
Subject
Notable awardsScience Writing Award
2016
Website
chriswoodford.com

Christopher J Woodford (born 13 December 1966)[1] is a British science writer. He has written several dozen educational science books for adults and children, which have won multiple awards, been published in numerous languages, and collectively sold around 4 million copies.[2][3]

Writing

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Woodford's 2015 book Atoms Under the Floorboards, which explains the science underpinning apparently mundane, everyday phenomena,[4][5][6] won the 2016 American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award[2][7] and was one of Physics World's Top 10 Books of the Year in 2015.[8] It was published in English, worldwide, by Bloomsbury and in foreign-language editions in Russia, China, Taiwan, Poland, South Korea, Italy, Germany, and Vietnam.[9] Woodford based the book around intriguing questions he received by email from readers of his popular science website (Explain that Stuff), such as how many pedalling hamsters you would need to generate enough energy to boil water for a cup of coffee.[10][11]

Woodford set up the website in 2006;[2] its articles have been downloaded over 100 million times[12] and cited in hundreds of books and scientific papers.[13][14]

Woodford began his career writing and editing children's science books,[15] and wrote three best-selling titles[2][12] in the Cool Stuff technology series for Dorling Kindersley.[16][17][18] The third volume, Cool Stuff Exploded, won the National Science Teachers Association/CBC Outstanding Science Books Award for 2009[19] and was described by New Scientist as "a stunning reminder of the ingenuity behind innovations we all too often take for granted".[20]

Woodford's other titles include Science: A Children's Encyclopedia with Steve Parker, published in 2014,[21][22] and a volume about the social impacts of the Internet, published by ABC-Clio in 2005.[23]

Apart from writing his own books, he has acted as a science consultant for other authors, including British TV scientists Richard Hammond, Robert Winston, and Johnny Ball, and the British-born American illustrator David Macaulay.[24]

Woodford's 2021 book Breathless, about the global problem of air pollution, was picked as a book of the month by The Independent in March 2021[25] and its introduction featured as an illustrated centre-page spread article in The i newspaper the same month.[26]

Activism

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Woodford describes himself as a "lifelong environmentalist"[27] and, as an activist, has worked on a range of green issues. In the mid-1990s, he was a member of the campaign against the Newbury bypass,[28][29] which the BBC described as "a fight between eco-warriors and police that caught the attention of a nation"[30] and "a turning point in British protesting history".[31]

During the campaign, Woodford documented evidence, which, he argued, showed English Nature (the statutory wildlife "watchdog") had deliberately sacrificed numerous protected habitats and species along the route of the road, including a colony of rare Desmoulin's whorl snails, which were "strictly protected" under European law.[32] According to a later investigation by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF): "Woodford sums up English Nature's involvement in Newbury as 'a catalogue of repeated failure to present a balanced view of the environmental impacts of the road... (these)... have played an important part in insuring the construction of one of the most environmentally destructive road proposals in the country.'"[32] English Nature countered that it was "not a campaigning organization" but, in June 1996, in one of the final attempts to halt the road, the issue became the subject of a High Court legal challenge, led by Friends of the Earth.[33] Although unsuccessful, this case turned the "Newbury snail" into a cause célèbre.[34][35][36] The Judge, Mr Justice Sedley, described his own legal verdict as "regretful... for one can appreciate the force of the view that if the protection of the natural environment keeps coming second we shall end by destroying our own habitat."[37] Some years later, Woodford ruefully told John Vidal in a Guardian interview how stopping the Newbury bypass had become a blinkered obsession for everyone involved but, more positively, also "a personal turning point, a huge thing where we felt we had really achieved something".[38]

Woodford later spent "almost a decade" campaigning against a proposed road tunnel through the Stonehenge World Heritage Site.[39][40][41] Woodford has also campaigned on various other "green" issues, including sustainable housing,[42] opencast mining,[43] air pollution[44][45] and climate change.[46][47]

Woodford's writing and activism often overlap; he regards failures to tackle environmental issues partly as problems of science communication.[12] In his 2015 book Atoms Under the Floorboards, he wrote: "We confuse the ozone layer and climate change, we think nuclear power is more risky than crossing the road, and despite 70 per cent of us thinking that newspapers and TV sensationalise science, 86 per cent of us rely on precisely these unreliable media to keep us informed".[48] He writes about green topics because he believes “communication about the environment is a major failure – possibly the biggest and most disastrous for the scientific community”.[2] Woodford is, nevertheless, sceptical of what he calls "feel-good" (superficial) environmentalism,[46] which he believes gets in the way of solving urgent problems such as pollution, because, as he told Neil Mackay in an interview in The Herald: "People see [it] as a sort of dilettantism".[44]

Woodford grew up near Birmingham,[49] UK and studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University.[1]

Selected publications

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Books for adults

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  • Woodford, Chris (2005). Poole, Hilary W. (ed.). The Internet: A Historical Encyclopedia: Issues. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 1851096590. Retrieved 9 August 2022.
  • Woodford, Chris (2015). Atoms Under the Floorboards: The Surprising Science Hidden in Your Home. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781472923233. Retrieved 5 March 2022.
  • Woodford, Chris (2021). Breathless: Why Air Pollution Matters and How it Affects You. London: Icon. ISBN 9781785787102.

Books for children

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References

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  1. ^ a b "Woodford, Chris - LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies". US Library of Congress. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  2. ^ a b c d e "AIP Congratulates its 2016 Science Writing Award Winners". American Institute of Physics. 6 October 2016. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  3. ^ "Chris Woodford: Science and Technology expert". Talk Radio Europe. Malaga, Spain. 24 November 2017. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  4. ^ Gurstelle, William (19 June 2015). "Bright Ideas". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  5. ^ Saragosa, Alex (22 February 2019). "Buono quel ketchup ma per capirlo ci vuole la fisica" (PDF). La Repubblica. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  6. ^ Durrani, Jamie (2016). "Review: Atoms Under the Floorboards". Chemistry World. Royal Society of Chemistry. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  7. ^ Cozzella, Eleonora (7 July 2018). "È come un bacio appassionato", ecco perché non resistiamo al cioccolato. E festeggiamo la giornata mondiale". La Repubblica. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  8. ^ Harris, Margaret (3 December 2015). "Top physics books of 2015". Physics World. Institute of Physics. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  9. ^ "Atoms Under the Floorboards: The Secret Science Hidden in Your Home". Andrew Lownie Literary Agency. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  10. ^ Killelea, Amanda (5 September 2015). "Concentrate... here comes the science bit: The eggheads' take on daily life". Daily Mirror. p. 5. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  11. ^ Horler, Vivien (12 July 2015). "How to have all the answers for your curious kid". The Cape Argus. South Africa. p. 19.
  12. ^ a b c Smith, Nick (18 March 2021). "Ever since humans discovered fire, air pollution has been an issue: Chris Woodford". Engineering & Technology. The Institution of Engineering and Technology. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  13. ^ "Google Books: explainthatstuff".
  14. ^ "Google Scholar: explainthatstuff".
  15. ^ Baroni, Nicola (24 April 2019). ""Prendete in giro i terrapiattisti, ma sapete perchê il vento non butta giù i grattacieli?": TPI intervista il divulgatore scientifico Chris Woodford". The Post Internazionale. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  16. ^ Malcolmson, Heather (8 December 2006). "Science Books for Fun and Learning: Some Recommendations from 2006". Science. 314 (5805): 1543–1545. doi:10.1126/science.1137746. JSTOR 20032967. S2CID 108670156. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  17. ^ Ardagh, Philip (1 October 2005). "Look at a Book: Cool for Kids". The Guardian. p. 14.
  18. ^ MacPherson, Karen (9 December 2007). "Wondrous Tales - All True". Washington Post. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  19. ^ "Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K–12: 2009" (PDF). National Science Teaching Association. National Science Teaching Association. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  20. ^ Robson, David (December 2008). "Review: Cool Stuff Exploded by Chris Woodford". New Scientist. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  21. ^ Woodford, Chris; Parker, Steve (24 September 2015). "Aké sú technológie budúcnosti a čo všetko za nás urobia roboty?". Pravda. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  22. ^ Brooks, Robin (5 September 2018). "Word Wednesday: DK's 'Science: A Children's Encyclopedia'". Geek Dad. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  23. ^ Woodford, Chris (2005). Poole, Hilary W. (ed.). The Internet: A Historical Encyclopedia: Issues. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 1851096590. Retrieved 9 August 2022.
  24. ^ Macaulay, David (2016). The Way Things Work Now. London: Dorling Kindersley. p. 4. ISBN 9780241227930.
  25. ^ Chilton, Martin (8 March 2021). "Books of the month: From Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun to Melissa Broder's Milk Fed". The Independent. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  26. ^ Woodford, Chris (8 March 2021). "Every breath you take". The i Paper. pp. 36–37. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  27. ^ Woodford, Chris (2021). Breathless: Why Air Pollution Matters and How it Affects You. London: Icon. p. 296. ISBN 9781785787102.
  28. ^ Taylor, Andrew; Boulton, Layla (7 June 1996). "Costain to build Newbury bypass". Financial Times. Mr Chris Woodford, an organiser of the Third Battle of Newbury umbrella group, said its direction action protests would now focus on the construction group.
  29. ^ Willey, Eldred (16 March 1996). "True Grit at Newbury". The Tablet. p. 383.
  30. ^ "Newbury Bypass: 20 years on". BBC News. 9 January 2016.
  31. ^ "Before and after the Newbury bypass". BBC News. 9 January 2016. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  32. ^ a b A Muzzled Watchdog?: Is English Nature Protecting Wildlife?. Godalming: WWF. November 1997. p. 20. ISBN 1858501377.
  33. ^ Schoon, Nicholas (26 June 1996). "High Court judge refuses Newbury by-pass judicial review". The Independent on Sunday.
  34. ^ Clarkson, Jeremy (31 August 1997). "Stop the road, they want to get off". The Sunday Times. p. 14. Ordinary people, it seems, are beginning to agree you can't build a road if there is a snail in the way.
  35. ^ Levin, Bernard (16 August 1996). "Coming out of my shell". The Times. p. 16. Yes, someone had discovered that... a lot of the rarest snails in this country would be crushed and be seen no more, if the Wicked Bypass made its way.
  36. ^ Glancey, Jonathan (27 July 1996). "Vroom, vroom! our romance with the car". The Independent on Sunday. Most cannot abide motorways and find the sight of ugly company cars hurtling along the outside lane of triple-carriage roads as offensive as does the most ardent, snail-loving, Newbury by-pass activist
  37. ^ Sedley, Stephen (25 June 1996), CO 1914/96 Regina v Secretary of State for Transport & Secretary of State for the Environment, ex parte BBONT, FoE Ltd, RSNC, WWF-UK, Janet Louise Stephens, Richard Williams Stephens
  38. ^ Van der Zee, Bibi; Vidal, John (11 January 2006). "No holds barred". The Guardian. p. 9.
  39. ^ Dennis, Jon (6 December 2007). "Newdesk Podcast". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 March 2022. Campaigner Chris Woodford of Save Stonehenge welcomes the government's decision today to scrap plans to build a 2.1km tunnel under the World Heritage Site because of spiraling costs.
  40. ^ "Soaring costs threaten Stonehenge road tunnel". The Daily Telegraph. 20 July 2005. Retrieved 5 March 2022. Chris Woodford, of the Save Stonehenge group, said: 'This scheme has become a white elephant - a half-billion-pound monster that would stampede through one of the world's best-loved landscapes, wreaking havoc and destruction...
  41. ^ "Stonehenge tunnel plans scrapped". BBC News. No. 6 December 2007. Retrieved 5 March 2022.
  42. ^ Jones, Simon (31 December 1997). "Concrete Proposal". The Guardian. pp. 40–41.
  43. ^ Woodford, Chris (22 August 1997). "We Must Have a Public Inquiry". Western Morning News. p. 10.
  44. ^ a b Mackay, Neil (21 March 2021). "NEIL MACKAY'S BIG READ: Air pollution is Scotland's biggest killer - so why are we doing nothing about it?". The Herald. Glasgow. Retrieved 5 March 2022.
  45. ^ "The Jo Good Show: Chris Woodford speaks about the impact of lockdown pollution". BBC Radio London. BBC. Retrieved 5 March 2022.
  46. ^ a b Compton, Natalie (10 September 2021). "How to actually make your travel better for the planet". The Washington Post. Retrieved 5 March 2022.
  47. ^ Woodford, Chris (2002). "Global Warming". World at Risk: A Global Issues Sourcebook. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press. pp. 256–277. ISBN 1568027079. Retrieved 4 April 2022.
  48. ^ Woodford, Chris (2015). Atoms Under the Floorboards: The Surprising Science Hidden in Your Home. London: Bloomsbury. p. 8. ISBN 9781472923233. Retrieved 5 March 2022.
  49. ^ Woodford, Chris (2021). Breathless: Why Air Pollution Matters and How it Affects You. London: Icon. p. 303. ISBN 9781785787102.


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