Jim Al-Khalili is the author of
The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave
Us the Renaissance (April 4, 2011; Penguin Press). He earned
his Ph.D. in theoretical nuclear physics from the University of Surrey and has
been a SERC Postdoctoral Fellow at University College, London, an EPSRC
Advanced Research Fellow and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. He is now
the chair of the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey.
On your nightstand now:
Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder and Brian Greene's The Hidden Reality.
Favorite book when you were a child:
A big hardback 1940s book called The Boy's Companion. It had chapters on everything from conjuring tricks to soccer to stamp collecting. I was bought it for Christmas when I was about 12.
Your top five authors:
J.R.R. Tolkien (naturally), John Fowles, Robert Heinlein, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett.
Book you've faked reading:
War and Peace; The Brothers Karamazov--I started it once and got about a quarter of the way through. I went through a rather pretentious period in my mid-20s when I felt that a real intellectual needed to be reading Dostoyevsky. Nonsense, of course.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Dan Dennett's Consciousness Explained--while Dennett is very much a reductionist, materialist philosopher, I am not alone in being swayed by his sheer logic and clarity.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Levitt and Dubner's Superfreakonomics--I had not read their earlier book, Freakonomics, but was captivated by the anarchic picture on the paperback cover. I must confess, however, that I did not finish it.
Book that changed your life:
Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind--it showed a tantalizing worldview based on modern physics that brought together lots of really big ideas. It had a big impact in academic circles in the late 1980s.
Favorite line from a book:
"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."--Robert A Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
There are other quotes I like but have forgotten, but this is one that rings true with me: I am an optimist, but my wife, Julie, is a pessimist (she would say a realist).
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
John Fowles's The Magus--I would love to be transported again to the tiny, beautiful Greek island of Spetses on which the location of the novel is based.