Richard Dawkins
Ethologist and evolutionary biologist
Biography
Richard Dawkins, ethologist and evolutionary biologist, was the first holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, and a Fellow of New College, Oxford, Retired. His bestselling books include The Selfish Gene, The God Delusion, The Extended Phenotype, The Blind Watchmaker, River Out of Eden, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, and The Ancestor’s Tale. Dawkins is a Fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. He is the recipient of numerous honours and awards, including the 1987 Royal Society of Literature Award, the 1990. Michael Faraday Award of the Royal Society, the 1994 Nakayama Prize, the 1997 International Cosmos Prize for Achievement in Human Science, the Kistler Prize in 2001, the Shakespeare Prize in 2005, the 2006 Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science, and he was named Author of the Year at the 2007 Galaxy British book Awards. His latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, was published in September 2009.