Professor Richard Dawkins
- Born
- 26 March 1941
Richard Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1941 and is considered to be one of the world’s leading scientists. He is an evolutionary biologist and ethologist who proposed that the transmission of genes is the driving force of evolution. This theory was considered controversial by many scientists.
At the age of eight, Dawkins moved to England with his family and until his mid-teenage years believed in God. However, on reading Darwin’s On the Origin of Species he learned about the theory of evolution which changed his beliefs.
Dawkins focused on the sciences and enrolled at Balliol College, University of Oxford where he received a BSc in Zoology in 1962. He continued at Oxford completing both his masters and doctorate by 1966, under Nikolaas Tinbergen. For a few years Dawkins moved to the University of California where he worked with Tinbergen, before becoming Assistant Professor of Zoology at the University of California. Here he became involved in anti-Vietnam war activities. He later returned to Oxford to teach zoology.
In 1976, the release of his first book, The Selfish Gene, launched him into fame. This proposed how natural selection takes place at a genetic level, not the species or individual level, which is what had previously been assumed. In this book, he also coined the term meme, the cultural equivalent of genes, which sparked a whole area of research.
Dawkins followed this with more than a dozen other books, as well as more than 60 scientific papers. The Blind Watchmaker, released in 1986, won a Royal Society of Literature award. Some of his other accolades include more than ten honorary doctorates, the Michael Faraday Prize, given for communicating science to the public, and the Nierenberg Prize for science in the public interest.
The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.
"From tail to tale on the path of pilgrims in life", The Scotsman, 9th April 2005
Dawkins is also well known for his controversial statements about religion, critique of creationism and the existence of a God. He has been in many debates and discussions about these topics and maintains that religion is a ‘fixed false belief’.
Dawkins also set up, and now runs, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science in 2006 and promotes this through a YouTube channel, web sites and television features. The foundation aims to promote rationalist and scientific materials.
Dawkins 2013 book, An Appetite for Wonder, provides an account of his life up to the publication of The Selfish Gene.
This profile was written by a Biology: Changing the World volunteer.