Richard Dawkins (1941 – present) is an evolutionary biologist known for emphasizing the role of the gene in biological evolution. His 1976 book The Selfish Gene popularized this gene-centered view of evolution.
Richard Dawkins was born in Kenya to two parents very much interested in the natural sciences who cultivated his curiosity in the natural world. At the age of eight his family moved to England where he attended public school before enrolling at Balliol College, Oxford – a constituent college of Oxford University. He was raised in a traditional Anglican upbringing, but by this point in his life he had abandoned Christianity in favor of the scientific worldview.
After a brief teaching job at UC Berkley in the USA, Dawkins returned to the UK in 1970 to be a lecturer at the University of Oxford. In 1976 he published his book The Selfish Gene, a wildly popular book that was effective at both explaining the gene-centered view of evolution to laypeople as well as persuasively convincing other scientists the validity of the idea. Not since Charles Darwin’s revolutionary book On The Origin of Species has a scientific literature been so successful at achieving both of those important ends. Interestingly, Dawkins coined the now famous term meme in this book, a term that has become an icon of internet culture.
Dawkins has gone on to author countless other best-selling science books while working as a professor at the University of Oxford. Since 1970 he has been a fellow of New College, Oxford. In 1995 he was appointed as chair to The Simonyi Professorship for the Public Understanding of Science, a position endowed by Charles Simonyi with the instructions that Richard Dawkins be the first to hold the position. In 2006 he founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science – a nonprofit science education organization.
More recently, Dawkins has become an outspoken critic of religion, especially of creationism. In 2006 he published his most popular book The God Delusion where he debunks the notion of an intervening God in our universe and where he masterfully illustrates religious faith as a delusion. The book has proven to be provocative to some, yet it has sold over 1 million copies while becoming an international best seller. In public he has been a leading figure in promoting the virtues of atheism while lambasting vices of religion. As of May 2019 Dawkins is currently authoring another book titled Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide to Atheism. It is expected out in September 2019.