Masud Husain took part in the pilot Wellcome Collection Non-Fiction Awards in 2022, run jointly by Spread the Word and Wellcome Collection.
We’re thrilled to learn that his book, Our Brains, Our Selves, has been awarded the 2025 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize. Supported by the Trivedi Family Foundation, the Prize celebrates the best popular science writing from across the globe.
Through the stories of seven of his patients, Our Brains, Our Selves shows us how our brains create our identity, how that identity can be changed, and sometimes even be restored.
Masud is an academic neurologist and neuroscientist. Born in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), he came to the UK in the 1960s and grew up in inner-city London and Birmingham. He studied Medicine at Oxford and was a Harkness Fellow at MIT, before holding positions at Imperial College and becoming Professor of Neurology at University College London and the National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery. Currently, he is Professor of Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow at New College, Oxford.
Of the Wellcome Collection Non-Fiction Awards, Masud said: “Although I have a lot of experience in scientific and medical writing, I’ve not previously written for a general audience. This award gives me a real opportunity to develop skills to tell a compelling story, to provide a fresh perspective and to make complex neuroscience accessible to the wider public. I want to tell patients’ stories but crucially also uncover what it reveals about normal brain functions. And I’d like to do this against the backdrop of contemporary Britain.”
Huge congratulations Masud!
Published: Wednesday 1 October 2025
Image credit: University of Oxford.