Female-dominated Wellcome book prize shortlist spans Victorian surgery and modern Nigeria

Titles vying for £30,000 award for books on health and medicine include Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’s novel Stay With Me and Sigrid Rausing’s memoir Mayhem

A life in science: Stephen Hawking

The physicist and author, who has died at his home in Cambridge, made intuitive leaps that will keep scientists busy for decades

A brief history of A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

The late physicist’s editor, Peter Guzzardi, recalls his first meetings with Hawking and how his book became a bestseller

‘I haven’t achieved much recently’: Albert Einstein’s private fears revealed in sister’s archive

The celebrated scientist frets about fame and his brain ‘going off with age’ in candid, soon to be auctioned correspondence with his sister, Maja

From The Simpsons to Pink Floyd: Stephen Hawking in popular culture

The scientist’s fame led to appearances on sitcoms, films about his life and music being written about him

The Genius Within review – a smart look at boosting our brains

David Adam explores the history of intelligence and ways to improve his own, raising timely questions

Wolfgang Tillmans: my two-year investigation into the post-truth era

Why are people today becoming so immune to facts? To find out, the photographer turned to politicians, activists, extremists – and even MRI scans

Steven Pinker recommends books to make you an optimist

There’s hope for the environment, human progress is dazzling – and the world, according to PG Wodehouse, is beautiful

A Philosophy of Dirt review – what does it mean to be clean?

Philosopher Olli Lagerspetz considers being dirty, and the fashion for filth in art

How to make a monster: what’s the science behind Shelley’s Frankenstein?

A look at the problems Victor Frankenstein would have faced, from preservation of tissue to developing new surgical techniques

How to eat flowers without poisoning yourself

I spent a week adding a floral touch to my meals – but if you don’t know what you’re doing, swiping flowers from the meadow can be a risky business

Steven Pinker: ‘The way to deal with pollution is not to rail against consumption’

The feather-ruffling Harvard psychologist’s new book, a defence of Enlightenment values, may be his most controversial yet

I refuse to let cancer deprive my sons of their mother

Having been orphaned herself, Genevieve Fox’s desire to look after herself when she became ill was matched only by her urge to look after her own children

Why the climate of Game of Thrones is about more than the arrival of winter

We modelled the climate for George RR Martin’s series for fun, but there’s a serious side to predicting weather for a fictional world

Is everything Johann Hari knows about depression wrong?

The Observer has published an excerpt from Johann Hari’s new book challenging what we know about depression. But do his own claims and arguments stack up?