Rebecca Priestley

New Zealand Listener

(@RKPriestley) Rebecca Priestley is a science writer and historian with a particular interest in New Zealand’s science history. Her anthology, The Awa Book of New Zealand Science, won the 2009 Royal Society of New Zealand Science Book Prize and Atoms, Dinosaurs & DNA: 68 Great New Zealand Scientists, co-authored with Veronika Meduna, won the Elsie Locke Award for Children’s Non-fiction in 2009. Rebecca curated The Art of Science, a joint exhibition between the Royal Society of New Zealand and the New Zealand Portrait Gallery, which opened in March 2011. As well as her regular science column for The Listener, she writes the occasional book review or travel feature and is working on two books: one about New Zealand’s nuclear and radiation history and the other an anthology of Antarctic science.

Circular arguments on crop circles

By Rebecca Priestley in Science

Issue 3792 3rd Jan 2013

UFOs, secret weapons tests, magnetic vortices – fanciful theories for crop circles abound.

It all started with a Big Bang

By Rebecca Priestley in Science

Issue 3791 27th Dec 2012

Our whole universe was in a hot dense state – but then what happened?

Waves and the formation of beaches

By Rebecca Priestley in Science

Issue 3790 20th Dec 2012

Much of the sand on our beaches dates back 12,000-30,000 years.

Extinction revisited

By Rebecca Priestley in Science

Issue 3789 13th Dec 2012

A new species or an old one getting re-established? New genetic techniques are providing some answers.

Time Warped by Claudia Hammond - review

By Rebecca Priestley in Books

Issue 3789 13th Dec 2012

Some of the best parts of the book are interviews with people such as BBC reporter Alan Johnston, who lost track of time while spending four months as a hostage in Gaza, says Rebecca Priestley.