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Richard Dawkins

English Ethologist, Evolutionary Biologist, Author

Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and author, who is known for his popularization of Darwinian ideas as well as for original thinking on evolutionary theory. The Selfish Gene is both the title of his groundbreaking first best seller and his most popular thesis: that evolution should be examined at the level of genes and that genes are “selfish” and exist solely to create more copies of themselves rather than to benefit the particular organism whose genetic makeup they happen to be a part of. In this view, organisms are merely tools to help genes make copies of themselves.

Dawkins was the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford in England. He has written nine best-selling books and appears regularly on radio and television. The recipient of many awards and honors, among them the 1990 International Cosmos Prize, the 1989 Silver Medal of the Zoological Society of London, and the 1990 Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize for the furtherance of the public understanding of science, he was named one of the 100 most influential individuals in the world by TIME magazine in 2007.

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