The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius is a 2009 biography of quantum physicist Paul Dirac written by British physicist and author, Graham Farmelo, and published by Faber and Faber.
 The book won the Biography Award at the 2009 Costa Book Awards, and the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology.
Graham Paul Farmelo (born 18 May 1953) is a biographer and science writer, a Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, U.K., and an Adjunct Professor of Physics at Northeastern University, Boston, U.S.A.
 He is best known for his work on science communication and as the author of "The Strangest Man", a prize-winning biography of the theoretical physicist Paul Dirac.
 He lives in London.
Christopher John Reid, FRSL (born 13 May 1949) is a Hong Kong-born British poet, essayist, cartoonist, and writer.
 In January 2010 he won the 2009 Costa Book Award for "A Scattering", written as a tribute to his late wife, the actress Lucinda Gane.
 Beside winning the poetry category, Reid became the first poet to take the overall Costa Book of the Year since Seamus Heaney in 1999.
What Was Lost is the 2007 début novel by Catherine O'Flynn.
 The novel is about a girl who goes missing in a shopping centre in 1984, and the people who try to discover what happened to her twenty years later.
 "What Was Lost" won the First Novel Award at the 2007 Costa Book Awards, and was short-listed for the overall Costa Book of the Year Award.
Day is a novel by A. L. Kennedy.
 It won the novel category and the overall Costa Book of the Year Award in the 2007 Costa Book Awards.
 The novel is about a man who was a tailgunner in a Lancaster bomber aircraft during World War II.
 Later, he is an extra in a film about prisoners of war.
Avril M. Joy is a British author whose short story "Millie and Bird" won the Costa Short Story Award in the 2012 Costa Book Awards.
Lucy Christopher is a British/Australian author best known for her novel "Stolen", which won the Branford Boase award 2010 in the UK, and the 2010 Gold Inky in Australia.
 Her second book, "Flyaway", was shortlisted for the 2010 Costa Book Awards and the 2010 Waterstone's Children's Book Prize.
 She currently lives in the United Kingdom and is working on her fourth novel, as well as the screenplay for her critically acclaimed novel "Stolen".
The Costa Book Awards (before 2006 known as the Whitbread Awards) are among the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary awards.
 They were launched in 1971, are given both for high literary merit but also for works that are enjoyable reading and whose aim is to convey the enjoyment of reading to the widest possible audience.
 This page gives details of the awards given in the year 2009.
The Costa Book Awards are a set of annual literary awards recognising English-language books by writers based in Britain and Ireland.
 They were inaugurated for 1971 publications and known as the Whitbread Book Awards until 2006 when Costa Coffee, a subsidiary of Whitbread, took over sponsorship.
 The companion Costa Short Story Award was established in 2012.
Christie Watson (born 1976) is a British novelist whose novel "Tiny Sunbirds Far Away" won the Costa First Novel Award in the 2011 Costa Book Awards.
 Her second novel "Where Women Are Kings" also won critical praise and has been widely translated.

Question: What year was the author of the book that won the Biography Award at the 2009 Costa Book Awards born?
Answer: 1953