It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide
The Universe

The Universe

A Biography

Summary

John Gribbin's The Universe: A Biography explores the story of our cosmos, from the mystery of its origins to how scientists think it might end.

How did the universe grow from a tiny fireball to its present size?
Where did life on earth come from?
How do planets form?
How will the universe end?
And how do we even know all this anyway?

John Gribbin, one of Britain's most popular writers about science and the people who made it happen, has decided to create a biography of the greatest subject of all: the universe itself, from beginning to end (and beyond).

From the Big Bang 14 billion years ago, the formation of stars and galaxies and the first stirrings of life, to the latest thinking on dark matter and a theory of everything - and beyond to the future possibility of a Big Crunch or a Big Rip - this is the life history of the entire world around us.

'If you really want to know about the greatest story there is, then this is the book to read' - Independent on Sunday

'As clear an account of current thinking on the subject as we are likely to get' - Daily Telegraph

'One of Britain's best and most prolific science writers' - Sunday Telegraph

'The master of popular science writing' - Sunday Times

About the author

John Gribbin

John Gribbin gained a PhD from the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge (then under the leadership of Fred Hoyle) before working as a science journalist for Nature and later New Scientist. He is the author of several bestselling popular science books, including In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, Science: A History, In Search of the Multiverse, Quantum Computing, and Six Impossible Things. He is a Senior Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Sussex and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more