Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist, zoologist, science communicator and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford. In 1995, he was named the first Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, a position he held until 2008, and is on the advisory board of the University of Austin. His book ''The Selfish Gene'' (1976) popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and coined the word ''meme''. Dawkins has won several academic and writing awards. In 2005, he was awarded the Shakespeare Prize.

Known as "Darwin’s Rottweiller", Dawkins is a critic of creationism and intelligent design. In ''The Blind Watchmaker'' (1986), he argues that the cumulative, nonrandom process of natural selection, coupled with random variation, can create complexity. In 1991, he gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on ''Growing Up in the Universe''. With Yan Wong, he coauthored ''The Ancestor's Tale'' (2004), a “Chaucerian pilgrimage to the dawn of life.”

Along with Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris, he is known as one of the “Four Horsemen of the New Atheism." He made the case for atheism in ''The God Delusion'' (2006). ''The Sunday Times'' described it as one of the 12 most influential books since World War II. That year, he founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. He edited ''The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing'' (2008) and authored a children's book, ''The Magic of Reality'' (2011). He has published two volumes of memoirs, ''An Appetite for Wonder'' (2013) and ''Brief Candle in the Dark'' (2015). Provided by Wikipedia