Richard Dawkins was born in Kenya in 1941. He studied zoology at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 1962, and received his master of arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees by 1966. From 1967 to 1969, he was an assistant professor of zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. He returned to Oxford to lecture in zoology in 1970. From 1995 to 2008 he was the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.
Dawkins is best known for his popularisation of the gene as the principal unit of selection in evolution. He launched the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science in 2006 in order to foster the acceptance of atheism and to champion scientific answers to existential questions. The Out Campaign, which he launched in 2007, urged atheists to publicly declare their beliefs. He also introduced the concept of “memes,” the cultural equivalent of genes.
Dawkins is a prolific author. In 1976, he published his first book, The Selfish Gene, followed in 1982 by The Extended Phenotype. Other titles include The Blind Watchmaker published in 1986, which won the Royal Society of Literature Award, River Out of Eden published in 1995 and The God Delusion published in 2006.
Dawkins delivered the Beatty Lecture on October 21, 2006, titled "Queerer Than We Suppose: The Strangeness of Science".
Listen to Richard Dawkin's Beatty Lecture:
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
Audio: CBC Archives
Image: Wikimedia Commons
