During the inagural Academic Book Week Darwin’s On the Origins of Species was voted by the public as the most influential academic book ever written.

A shortlist of 20 books was compiled, including among others Newton’s Principia, Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and Orwell’s 1984 to name but a few.

In the following post Emily Tee provides a rationale to her voting preferences. Her comments and the original shortlist lead me to ask the following questions:

Does the result of the vote reflect voting preferences based on the fame of a book or author rather than influence of the book?

Should 1984 have been included on the academic shortlist?

Which book would you have voted for and why?

Unfortunately, the vote is now closed but I would have opted for Newton’s Prinicpia. However, I may be biased being a physicist!

Please comment.