Philip Ball is an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 science writer. He holds a degree in chemistry from Oxford and a doctorate in physics from Bristol University. He was an editor for the journal Nature

Nature (journal)

Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...

for over 10 years. He now writes a regular column in Chemistry World

Chemistry World

Chemistry World is a monthly chemistry news magazine published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. The magazine addresses current events in world of chemistry including research, international business news and government policy as it affects the chemical science community, plus the best product...

. Ball's most-popular book is the 2004 Critical Mass

Critical Mass (book)

Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another is a non-fiction book by English chemist and physicist Philip Ball, originally published in 2004 by William Heinemann of Great Britain, which outlines a “physics of society”, both in an historical sense, namely those thinkers of the past, such as Thomas...

: How One Things Leads to Another, winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books.

Critical Mass

Ball's 2004 book Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads To Another examines a wide range of topics including the business cycle

Business cycle

The term business cycle refers to economy-wide fluctuations in production or economic activity over several months or years...

, random walk

Random walk

A random walk, sometimes denoted RW, is a mathematical formalisation of a trajectory that consists of taking successive random steps. For example, the path traced by a molecule as it travels in a liquid or a gas, the search path of a foraging animal, the price of a fluctuating stock and the...

s, phase transition

Phase transition

A phase transition is the transformation of a thermodynamic system from one phase or state of matter to another.A phase of a thermodynamic system and the states of matter have uniform physical properties....

s, bifurcation theory

Bifurcation theory

Bifurcation theory is the mathematical study of changes in the qualitative or topological structure of a given family, such as the integral curves of a family of vector fields, and the solutions of a family of differential equations...

, traffic flow

Traffic flow

Traffic flow, in mathematics and civil engineering, is the study of interactions between vehicles, drivers, and infrastructure , with the aim of understanding and developing an optimal road network with efficient movement of traffic and minimal traffic congestion problems.-History:Attempts to...

, Zipf's law, Small world phenomenon, catastrophe theory

Catastrophe theory

In mathematics, catastrophe theory is a branch of bifurcation theory in the study of dynamical systems; it is also a particular special case of more general singularity theory in geometry....

, the Prisoner's dilemma

Prisoner's dilemma

The prisoner’s dilemma is a canonical example of a game, analyzed in game theory that shows why two individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interest to do so. It was originally framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher working at RAND in 1950. Albert W...

. The overall theme is one of applying modern mathematical models to social and economic phenomena.

The book was awarded Aventis Prize for 2005.

External links

• Philip Ball Homepage