Richard Dawkins
Professor, Academic
1941 –
Who is Richard Dawkins?
Clinton Richard Dawkins, DSc, FRS, FRSL is an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008.
Dawkins came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and introduced the term meme. In 1982, he introduced into evolutionary biology the influential concept that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms; this concept is presented in his book The Extended Phenotype.
Dawkins is an atheist, a vice president of the British Humanist Association, and a supporter of the Brights movement. He is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, he argues against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he describes evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker.
Famous Quotes:
- However many ways there are of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead, or rather not alive.
- The God of the Old testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction...
- This is the law that all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities.
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- Born
- Mar 26, 1941
Nairobi - Also known as
- Dr. Richard Dawkins
- Prof Richard Dawkins
- Prof. Richard Dawkins
- Professor Richard Dawkins
- Clinton Richard Dawkins
- Darwin's Rottweiler
- Dr Why
- Parents
- Spouses
- Lalla Ward
(1992 - ) - Marian Stamp Dawkins
(1967/08/19 - 1984) - Eve Barham
(1984/06/01 - )
- Lalla Ward
- Children
- Religion
- Atheism
- Humanism
- Ethnicity
- White British
- English people
- White Africans of European ancestry
- Nationality
- United Kingdom
- Profession
- Education
- Oundle School
(1954 - 1959) - Bachelor of Arts, Balliol College
Zoology
( - 1962) - Doctor of Science, University of Oxford
( - 1989) - PhD, Balliol College
( - 1966) - Master of Arts, Balliol College
- Oundle School
- Employment
- University of Oxford
- University of California, Berkeley
- Lived in
- Nairobi
- Oxford
Submitted
on July 23, 2013
Citation
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"Richard Dawkins." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 24 Apr. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/richard_dawkins>.
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