Philip Ball is a writer, author, and science communicator. He was an editor at Nature for 20 years. His many books on science and its interaction with broader culture include Bright Earth, Beyond Weird, and, more recently, How Life Works. His book Critical Mass won the 2005 Aventis Science Book Prize. In 2022, he was awarded the Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal of the Royal Society for his contributions to the history, philosophy, and social functions of science.