Inventing Ourselves by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore wins £25,000 prize with investigation praised by judges as ‘truly a book that everyone should read’
A radical reframing of our understanding of the teenage mind, that explains typically ridiculed behaviours such as risk-taking, emotional instability and heightened self-consciousness as outward signs of great transformation, has won the prestigious Royal Society prize for science book of the year.
Two thousand years since Socrates said that teenagers have “bad manners, contempt for authority, show disrespect for elders and love chatter in the place of exercise”, Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain by neuroscientist Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore has scooped the £25,000 prize on Monday night. Blakemore is the fourth woman to win the prize over its 30-year history, and also the fourth in a row, following Cordelia Fine for her book Testosterone Rex last year, Andrea Wulf in 2016 for The Invention of Nature and Gaia Vince for Adventures in the Anthropocene in 2015.
Related: ‘Teens get a bad rap’: the neuroscientist championing moody adolescents
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