Dawkins, Richard (1941-…), a British biologist and writer, is famous for his popular writings on biology and his support of atheism. Atheism is the belief that there is no God. Dawkins has made influential contributions to the study of evolution, the development of living things.
Dawkins made popular a set of ideas known as selfish gene theory. The theory concerns natural selection, the evolutionary process by which individuals better suited to their environment tend to leave more descendants. This principle has been called survival of the fittest (see Natural selection). Much thinking on natural selection concerns the success of individual organisms. Selfish gene theory, on the other hand, holds that natural selection acts not on individuals but on genes, the basic units of inheritance (see Gene). Genes in this theory are called “selfish” because the success of the gene is of primary importance, not the success of the organism.
Dawkins introduced the term meme (pronounced meem) to describe a unit of culture that can be copied from one person to another. Examples of memes include musical tunes, political ideas, and religious beliefs. Dawkins suggested that memes, like genes, are subject to natural selection.
Dawkins has written many books, including The Selfish Gene (1976), The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Climbing Mount Improbable (1996), and The Ancestor’s Tale (2004). In The God Delusion (2006), he criticizes religious belief.
Clinton Richard Dawkins was born March 26, 1941, in Kenya. He studied under the Dutch-born zoologist Nikolaas Tinbergen at Oxford University, where he earned his doctorate in 1966. Dawkins worked for the University of California at Berkeley from 1967 to 1969. He then returned to Oxford.
