Richard Dawkins

Clinton Richard Dawkins was born on March 26, 1941, in Nairobi, Kenya.⁠[1]

His father read botany, went on to a career in agriculture and served with the King’s African Rifles; in his childhood the family left Africa for a farm in England.⁠[2]

His full name gives him the same initials as his greatest hero, Charles Robert Darwin; his first school was in Rhodesia, followed by a preparatory school in England.⁠[3]

In the 1950s he attended the boarding school Oundle; he recalls abandoning conventional Anglicanism there and concluding that Darwinian evolution offered an alternative to any creator god.⁠[3]

He studied at Balliol College, Oxford, from 1959 to 1962, then became a research student and received his D.Phil. in 1966.⁠[4]

As an undergraduate he fell under the spell of the animal behaviourist Niko Tinbergen, under whom he went on to work as a research student.⁠[3]

His research on the pecking of chicks involved processing large amounts of data, which drew him to computer programming.⁠[2]

From 1967 to 1969 he was assistant professor of zoology at the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry, before returning to Oxford.⁠[5]

He and his wife, Marian Stamp, moved to California, where she carried out research for her PhD.⁠[2]

He was Oxford lecturer in zoology and Fellow of New College from 1970 to 1990, and Reader from 1990 to 1995.⁠[4]

In 1976 Oxford University Press published his first book, The Selfish Gene, which sets out a gene’s-eye view of evolution in which organisms are vehicles for the replication of genes; its eleventh chapter is titled “Memes: the new replicators.”⁠[6]

In the book he coined the term meme, which later came into wide use for internet fads.⁠[7]

In 1982 he published The Extended Phenotype; Sydney Brenner’s review in Nature called the extended phenotype a big idea pressed hard in dramatic language.⁠[8]

The Blind Watchmaker, published in 1986, answers William Paley’s watchmaker argument for design, arguing that natural selection is an unconscious process with no purpose in mind: a blind watchmaker.⁠[9]

The book won the Royal Society of Literature Award and the Los Angeles Times Literary Prize in 1987.⁠[5]

He received the Zoological Society of London’s Silver Medal in 1989 and the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday Award in 1990.⁠[5]

The Royal Society’s citation recognised his written, broadcast and public presentations as accessible, imaginative and enjoyed by large audiences.⁠[10]

From December 1, 1991, he gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures under the title Growing Up in the Universe, on how life evolves by gradual degrees; the series featured a variety of wildlife, a virtual-reality lecture theatre and guests including Douglas Adams, who read an excerpt from his work.⁠[11]

In 1995 a donation from Charles Simonyi founded the chair for the public understanding of science at Oxford, and Dawkins became its first holder.⁠[12]

The same year he published River Out of Eden, which argues that the universe we observe has precisely the properties to be expected if, at bottom, there is no design and no purpose.⁠[13]

In 1996 the American Humanist Association named him Humanist of the Year for his contributions to communicating scientific concepts to the public.⁠[14]

Climbing Mount Improbable, published the same year, rebuts the creationist argument that organs such as the eye could not have arisen by chance and so require a designer, likening evolution to climbing a mountain gradually by way of smaller slopes rather than in a straight assault on the peak.⁠[15]

In 1997 he received the International Cosmos Prize from Japan’s Expo ’90 Foundation and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.⁠[4]

In 1998 he published Unweaving the Rainbow, rebutting Keats’s charge that Newton spoiled the poetry of the rainbow and criticising astrology and belief in the paranormal.⁠[16]

In 1999, as Simonyi Professor, he set up the Simonyi Lectures.⁠[12]

In May 2001 the Royal Society announced his election as a Fellow for his work on evolution and for raising the public understanding of science.⁠[17]

In 2003 he published the essay collection A Devil’s Chaplain, whose title comes from Darwin’s 1856 letter to Hooker; its essays include a lament for his friend Douglas Adams, an exchange with Stephen Jay Gould and a critique of postmodernism.⁠[18]

In 2004 he published The Ancestor’s Tale, which borrows Chaucer’s pilgrimage framework to march humans back through evolutionary time to 40 rendezvous with other species, all the way to the origin of life.⁠[19]

From January 2004 to December 2008 he chaired the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday Prize Committee.⁠[10]

In 2006 he published The God Delusion, which argues that belief in God is irrational and describes the harm he says religion has inflicted on society.⁠[20]

The same year he founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, which supported projects such as the Out Campaign encouraging people to be open about their atheism; he, Daniel Dennett, Sam HarrisSam HarrisSam Harris is an American author, philosopher and neuroscience PhD, host of the Making Sense podcast and founder of the Waking Up meditation app; he rose to prominence with The End of Faith and other critiques of religion and is regarded as a leading figure of the “New Atheism,” and has since written and spoken on morality, free will, meditation and politics, often provoking controversy.Open the full entry and Christopher Hitchens became known as the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism.⁠[21]

On January 9 and 16, 2006, Channel 4 broadcast The Root of All Evil?, a two-part documentary presented by Dawkins, with episodes titled The God Delusion and The Virus of Faith.⁠[22]

In 2007 the Festschrift Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think, edited by Alan Grafen and Mark Ridley and published by Oxford University Press, was presented to him on his 65th birthday, with contributors including Daniel Dennett, Steven PinkerSteven PinkerSteven Pinker is a Canadian-born experimental psychologist and popular-science author who studies language, cognition and social relations; after more than two decades at MIT he has been a professor of psychology at Harvard University since 2003, and his books include The Language Instinct, The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now.Open the full entry and David Deutsch.⁠[23]

In 2008 he stepped down as Simonyi Professor; that October Oxford confirmed that the mathematician Marcus du Sautoy would succeed him from December 1.⁠[24]

In September 2009 he published his tenth book, The Greatest Show on Earth, timed for the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species; it assembles evidence for evolution from fossils, developmental biology, biogeography and evolution observed in real time.⁠[25]

In 2011 he published The Magic of Reality, illustrated by Dave McKean, which sets myths alongside scientific explanations of questions such as what stuff is made of, how old the universe is and what causes tsunamis.⁠[26]

On February 23, 2012, he and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, discussed the origins of nature before a full house at Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre, with Sir Anthony Kenny putting questions on topics including the origin of life on Earth and the origin of the universe.⁠[27]

In Prospect magazine’s 2013 world thinkers poll, which drew more than 10,000 votes from over 100 countries, he ranked first; that March he voiced a demon version of himself on The Simpsons.⁠[7]

That year he published the first part of his autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder.⁠[28]

The book follows him from childhood in colonial Africa through boarding school in England to his studies in Oxford’s Zoology Department, which led to The Selfish Gene.⁠[29]

In 2015 Bantam Press published the second volume of his memoirs, Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science.⁠[30]

The book is a series of anecdotes about his life as an Oxford don, how his endowed chair came about, television programmes and lectures, and encounters with figures such as Neil Armstrong and Christopher Hitchens.⁠[31]

In January 2016 the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science announced its merger with the Amherst-based Center for Inquiry, creating the largest secularist group in the United States under the foundation’s president, Robyn Blumner; Dawkins joined the Center for Inquiry’s board of directors.⁠[32]

The merged organisation kept the Center for Inquiry name; the foundation brought $1.3 million to $1.5 million in assets to the center, which then had a $5.2 million budget.⁠[33]

In July 2017, in a public poll commissioned by the Royal Society to mark 30 years of its Science Book Prize, The Selfish Gene was voted the most inspiring science book of all time by the 1,309 participants.⁠[34]

In July 2017 the Berkeley public radio station KPFA cancelled an August 9 fundraiser at which he was to discuss his new book Science in the Soul, calling his comments on Islam “abusive speech” and offering him a chance to discuss the matter on air.⁠[35]

Dawkins responded that the station had neither checked its facts nor contacted him, said he had never used abusive speech against Islam, and said his criticism was of Islamism, of which he considers Muslims, especially Muslim women, the prime victims.⁠[35]

In 2019 he published Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide, aimed at young readers, which recounts how learning about evolution changed his mind about a designer of living things.⁠[36]

He appeared on episode 87 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, whose description calls him an evolutionary biologist; topics included intelligent life in the universe, the human brain and AGI, memes, whether society needs religion, conspiracy theories, where morals come from, simulation and the meaning of life.⁠[37]

In 2021 Bantam Press published Books Do Furnish a Life, which gathers his forewords, afterwords and introductions to works by Carl Sagan, Lawrence Krauss, Jacob Bronowski and others, along with book reviews and conversations with Neil deGrasse Tyson, Steven Pinker and others.⁠[38]

The same year he published Flights of Fancy, illustrated by Jana Lenzová, about how animals and humans have overcome gravity to take to the air.⁠[39]

On April 10, 2021, he posted on Twitter a question about transgender identity that cited the case of Rachel Dolezal; he later clarified that he did not intend to disparage trans people.⁠[40]

On April 19 the American Humanist Association board withdrew the 1996 Humanist of the Year award, saying he had for several years made statements that used the guise of scientific discourse to demean marginalised groups and that his clarifications were inadequate. He responded that the honour had not meant enough to him to be worth recording in his CV.⁠[14][40]

In early 2023 he made a speaking tour of Australia and New Zealand and wrote in The Spectator opposing New Zealand’s move to give Mātauranga Māori equal standing with science in science classes, arguing that science belongs to all humanity.⁠[41]

On September 17, 2024, Yale UniversityYale UniversityYale University is a research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Its predecessor, the Collegiate School, received a charter in 1701. Trustees chose New Haven in 1716; the institution became Yale College in 1718 and Yale University in 1887. Yale provides undergraduate, graduate and professional education and has 14 undergraduate residential colleges. As of October 2026, its president was Maurie McInnis, who took office in July 2024. In 2026, Yale expanded aid for incoming undergraduates and celebrated its 325th anniversary.Open the full entry Press published his The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie, illustrated by Jana Lenzová.⁠[42]

The book argues that the body, behaviour and genes of every living creature can be read as a book that describes the ancient worlds in which its ancestors survived.⁠[43]

He toured the new book under the title The Final Bow, appearing at the Royal Festival Hall in London on October 27, 2024, where he said he would not tour the United States again and planned a UK tour for the 50th anniversary of The Selfish Gene.⁠[44]

In December 2024, after the Freedom From Religion Foundation removed an article by the biologist Jerry Coyne on the biological definition of sex, Dawkins resigned from its Honorary Board; his letter called the removal an act of unseemly panic, done without informing the author, while expressing the wish to remain on friendly terms.⁠[45]

FFRF co-presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor had said that publishing the article was an error of judgment and that it did not reflect the foundation’s values; Steven Pinker and Coyne also resigned.⁠[46]

Gaylor took responsibility for both publishing and removing the piece, saying the foundation should simply have declined it; the foundation then dissolved its 14-member honorary board.⁠[47]

In March 2025, aged 83, he said that the polemical side of his work had been exaggerated but that he did not regret entering the culture wars because they impinge on science; he said what moves him most is how many people say he changed their lives.⁠[48]

In 2026 Bloomsbury published his 42 Tales from Life: A Modern Bestiary, 42 tales illustrated with artwork by Ernst Haeckel that explain the evolutionary stories behind a range of animal features and behaviours.⁠[49]

As of October 2026 his official website lists events in November 2026 in Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne, Perth, Auckland and Wellington, and an event at London’s Dominion Theatre on March 7, 2027.⁠[50]

He hosts the podcast The Poetry of Reality, an audio and video series exploring the natural world and scientific questions.⁠[51]

Personal website: Public link: https://richarddawkins.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[52]

X: Public account: https://x.com/RichardDawkins (opens in a new window)⁠[37]

University of Oxford: Official website: https://www.ox.ac.uk/ (opens in a new window)⁠[27]

University of California, Berkeley: Official website: https://www.berkeley.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[5]

Center for Inquiry: Official website: https://centerforinquiry.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[33]