Biologist
I am David Bainbridge and I write popular science books, usually about biology. My aim is to write books that can explain to anyone how we work.
Contrary to popular belief, science is essentially simple. Unlike most areas of human endeavour, our scientific knowledge has accumulated as a series of simple incremental steps. Because of this, it can all be explained as a simple story, so long as you leave out all the awful jargon. Although I now work at Cambridge University, I used to work as a veterinary surgeon and I soon realised that you can explain biology to anyone as long as you see it from their point of view.
Also, biology can be more interesting than most people expect. Obviously, it has the power to tell us what we are and how we got here, but the story of how we acquired that knowledge is itself fascinating. The history of biology is populated by an array of wonderful, awful, charming, irritating, strange, imperfect people who got it wrong more often than they got it right. And sometimes getting it wrong is more interesting. Most of all it has shown us that although humans represent just one of millions of animal species, we are the weirdest and most fascinating species on earth. And only by understanding that weirdness can we understand why humans do the things we do, and why being human feels like it does.
I love a blank page and the opportunities it gives. A chance to weave words into a narrative of what we know and why we know it. I like to base my books on questions which non-specialists ask me – no one asks more interesting questions.
And most of all, I like to tell stories.
Courtesy of David Bainbridge's Official Site.