Author interview: George Johnson

If you could choose an eleventh beautiful experiment, what would it be?

Madame Chien-Shiung Wu’s demonstration of parity violation – which showed (to put it starkly) that the universe is lopsided.

If you could have discovered anything, what would it have been?

Cold fusion.

If you had to choose one book to take to a desert island, what would it be?

Burnham’s Celestial Handbook (which is actually three volumes) or some other good atlas of the night sky. If I couldn’t leave the island, I could at least explore the wilderness revolving overhead.

What or who inspired you to become a writer?

I don’t know. It’s just something I always wanted to do.

Do you have a writing routine and how do you cure writer’s block?

I work every morning and think and read in the afternoon. Writing is always hard. You just have to do it.

What book changed your life?

I’m not sure any single book was pivotal, but Horace Freeland Judson’s The Eighth Day of Creation showed me that fine science writing can aspire to literature.

What is your favourite word?

Deliquesce.

What is your least favourite word?

Chthonic.

What is currently on your bedside table?

John Brooks’ Once in Golconda (a history of Wall Street before and after the crash of 1929), Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory, Gabriel García Márquez’s Living to Tell the Tale, Andrew Kazdin’s Glenn Gould at Work, and Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire.

What book made you laugh/cry?

I found Julian Barnes’s Arthur and George to be especially moving.

Who are your heroes?

Saul Bellow, Marie Curie, Antoine Lavoisier, Arthur Koestler, John Wesley Powell, Will Durant . . .

What was your childhood ambition?

To be a scientist. Or a writer.

What makes you cross?

Loudness.

What is the best advice you’ve been given?

Ideas come cheap. It’s the execution that is valuable.

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