Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is a British evolutionary biologist, zoologist, science communicator, noted atheist and author, born on 26 March 1941. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and in 1995 was named the first Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, a position he held until 2008. Among his awards are the 2005 Shakespeare Prize and the 2006 Lewis Thomas Prize. He has written a number of popular books explaining evolution: in The Selfish Gene (1976) he espoused the gene-centred view of evolution and coined the word meme, in The Blind Watchmaker (1986) he explained how the cumulative, non-random process of natural selection coupled with random variation creates complexity, and in Climbing Mount Improbable (1996) he explored how evolution gradually creates complex adaptations through a series of intermediates.