Hugh Aldersey-Williams

Hugh Aldersey-Williams (born 1959) is a British author and journalist. Aldersey-Williams was educated at Highgate School and studied the natural sciences at the University of Cambridge. His several books discuss issues surrounding natural and man-made designs. He has curated exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum as well as the Wellcome Collection.

Aldersey-Williams is perhaps best known for his 2011 book Periodic Tales, which The Daily Telegraph described as "a paean to the building blocks of matter". The book (ISBN 9780061824722) takes a comprehensive look through world history to detail where, how, and why humanity discovered the elements. It also received praise from Kirkus Reviews, which labelled it "lucid" and "enjoyable". In October 2015 he co-curated an exhibition based on the book at Compton Verney Art Gallery, Periodic Tales: The Art of the Elements, exhibiting predominantly contemporary art works and focusing on the relationship between artistic objects and the elemental materials that go into their making.

Aldersey-Williams contributed an essay on Sir Thomas Browne to The Society for Curious Thought.

Background

Aldersey-Williams has a lifetime hobby, since his teenage days, of collecting samples of the elements and setting them up in his home.

Books

• The Most Beautiful Molecule: The Discovery of the Buckyball, John Wiley & Sons, 1995
• Zoomorphic: New Animal Architecture, Collins Design, 2003
• Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements, from Arsenic to Zinc, Ecco Press, 2011
• Anatomies: A Cultural History of the Human Body, W. W. Norton & Company, 2013
• In Search of Sir Thomas Browne: The Life and Afterlife of the Seventeenth Century's Most Inquiring Mind, W. W. Norton & Company, 2015
• Tide: The Science and Lore of the Greatest Force on Earth, Viking, 2016
• Dutch Light: Christiaan Huygens and the Making of Science in Europe, Pan Macmillan, 2020

See also

• List of University of Cambridge members
• List of English writers