Sheilla Jones is an award-winning Canadian journalist with an advanced degree in theoretical physics.

It’s no surprise, then, that her literary interests lie in popular science and Canadian politics. Or that investigative journalism should lead to plotting murder mysteries.

Left: Sheilla holds a rare 30th Anniversary Edition of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica, Rare Books Collection, Institute of Astronomy , University of Cambridge.

Read Sheilla's latest book reviews:

New: The Spinning Magnet: The Force That Created the Modern World — and Could Destroy It, by Alanna Mitchell, Winnipeg Free Press, March 3, 2018

New: Real Quanta: Simplifying Quantum Physics for Einstein and Bohr, by Martijn van Calmthout, February 15, 2018

Recent:  Caesar's Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us, by Sam Kean, Winnipeg Free Press, August 5, 2017

Recent: Trudeaumania, by Paul Litt, and Trudeaumania: The Rise to Power of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, by Robert Wright, Winnipeg Free Press, November 26, 2016

Recent: Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, by Margot Lee Shetterly, Winnipeg Free Press, September 24, 2016

DOCUMENTARY

Infinite Possibilities:

The Science of Parallel Universes

By Sheilla Jones, with Dwight Vincent

CBC Ideas, 2002

Do we live in one of an infinite number of universes? Quantum mechanics seems to say that we do, but it’s not an easy to get a handle on a such a big idea. Sheilla Jones gives it a shot, along with cosmologists Dwight Vincent, Max Tegmark, David Deutsch and Bryce DeWitt. Run time: 55 min.



Creating a mystery series

By Sheilla Jones

The idea for the “Blood & Fire” murder mystery series was born of a collision of ideas: my on-going search for a mystery premise that is new and fresh, and husband Jim’s discovery that his great-great grandmother was the first matron of the Salvation Army’s Rescue Home for fallen women in 1896 Helena, Montana. It was the proverbial “aha!” moment. What better place for a strong female “detective” than managing a house full of prostitutes, drunks and outlaws... Read more

Did you know that the Salvation Army had its own international detective agency? Learn more about Mrs. Booth's Bureau of Enquiry, opening in 1885 in Hackney, London.

Curious facts about the Salvation Army:

Much of what people know about the colourful history of the Salvation Army is shaped by George Bernard Shaw’s 1905 play Major Barbara and the 1941 movie based on that play, or by the 1983 British television sit-com Hallelujah! starring the inimitable Thora Hird. But there is so much more.

Did you know...

• The legal right for citizens to hold street parades is due to the SA. Opponents of the SA went to absurd lengths to use the long-standing Highways Act as grounds to arrest Salvationists for obstructing the streets. After a period of mass arrests and vicious attacks...  Read more

BOOKS

Bankrupting Physics:

How Today's Top Scientists are

Gambling Away Their Credibility

Alexander Unzicker & Sheilla Jones

Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2013

The Quantum Ten:

A Story of Passion, Tragedy, Ambition and Science

Sheilla Jones

Thomas Allen Publishers, Toronto, 2008

Oxford University Press, New York, 2008

Rotten to the Core:

The Politics of the Manitoba Metis Federation

Sheila Jones Morrison

101060, imprint of J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing, Winnipeg, 1995