Richard Dawkins

Evolutionary biologist & author

Richard Dawkins is a leading British evolutionary biologist and popular science author and was formerly the Charles Simonyi Professor in the Public Understanding of Science, University of Oxford. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and was Assistant Professor of Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley in the late-1960s, before lecturing in zoology at Oxford. He is well known as a prominent and outspoken atheist and critic of religion and creationsim, and has released a number of books on the subject. He has also recently appeared in a number of documentary films, including The Enemies of Reason (2007), and The Genius of Charles Darwin (2009).

Dawkins was named one of TIME magazine's 100 most influential people in 2007. He is the author of best-sellers
The Selfish Gene (1976), The Extended Phenotype (1982), The God Delusion (2006), and The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (2009).