Richard Dawkins biography

Clinton Richard Dawkins (March 26, 1941) ethologist, zoologist, and evolutionary biologist. He was born in Nairobi, Kenya, Africa. Although his parents are from England. Richard was born in African lands because at that time his father, Clinton John Dawkins, was engaged as a farmer, before that he had been rendered his service to the fatherland as a soldier in Nyasaland (now Malawi). And his mother was Jean Mary Vyvyan Dawkins. The family enjoyed a well-off position. They were also very educated and enlightened, a question that Richard inherited. His taste for biology was great, he spent his time reading natural science books and exploring every corner of the farm.

He was educated under the precepts of the Anglican religion, but without falling into radicalism, from the age of nine began to question the divine existence. Although at first, he continued to lukewarmly follow the argument of design, the uses and customs of Anglican ecclesiastics seemed absurd to him and had more to do with dictating morals than with God. So, at the age of sixteen, he studied evolution, and became completely detached from religion and embraced the idea that evolution could account for the complexity of life in purely material terms.

At this time the young man was already living in England with his parents and attended the Oundle school. As soon as he graduated, he began studying zoology at Balliol College. Once there, he was a student of the ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen, winner of a Nobel Prize in Medicine. He was a research student under the tutelage of Tinbergen. In 1962 he graduated and then completed his master’s degree in 1966. Here he also excelled as a research student. He was for a period of almost twenty years with his wife Marian Stamp. Then he married Eve Barham, with whom he had a daughter: Juliet.

After a few years, he divorced. In 1992 he married for the third time with the actress Lalla Ward. She has illustrated several of his books. Returning to his professional career we must say that he developed for a long time as a professor of zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. Simultaneously began his career as a lecturer, especially was hired by the University of Oxford. In 1995 he moved to the Charles Simonyi Chair of Science Dissemination. Since 1970 he has been a member of the New College, Oxford.

He has offered several lectures in important knowledge centers, such as: Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture (1989), the first Erasmus Darwin Memorial Lecture (1990), the Michael Faraday Lecture (1991), the Huxley Memorial Lecture (1992), the Irvine Memorial Lecture (1997), the Sheldon Doyle Lecture (1999), the Tinbergen Lecture (2000) and the Tanner Lecture (2003). Among others. He was a founder of the scientific journal Episteme Journal in 2002 and has also collaborated in the edition of Encarta Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia of Evolution. In short, he has written in several columns, the most outstanding was that of the Free Inquiry magazine of the Council for Secular Humanism.

He also chaired the biological sciences section of the British Society for Scientific Progress. His great mastery and popularity have earned him several management positions in various organizations. He served as a jury of awards such as the Faraday Prize of the Royal Society and the British Academy Award. He participated in a conference that brings together the most outstanding personalities of the scientific community. On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin

, he was named doctor honoris causa by the University of Valencia.

Dawkins defended the vision of the evolution centered on the genes, a vision exposed his book the egoistic gene (1976), or the extended phenotype (1982). Now, as an ethologist interested in animal behavior and its relationship with natural selection, his thesis was that the gene is the main unit of selection of evolution. In his books he has used the genocentric vision, explaining that it is a useful model of evolution in some cases. Another contribution of Dawkins was the use of the term meme to extend the principles of Darwin and explain the dissemination of ideas and cultural phenomena, this gave way to the theory of memetics. This theory has been criticized for being too reductionist. One of the people who have most questioned and debated with him has been the philosopher Mary Midgley.

He was present at the XXXIV Convention of American Atheists in March 2008. He is one of the critics of the most famous creationism in the world. In The Blind Watchmaker faithfully exposes such criticism. For the above is considered an atheist. However, he says he is agnostic. He is an honorary member of the National Lay Society. Dawkins is known for his rejection of religious extremism, from Islamist terrorism to Christian fundamentalism. In educational matters ensures that education must be detached from religious dogma. In the year 2006, he made a documentary on a channel entitled The root of all evil speaks about the malign influence of organized religion in society.

Dawkins published that same year, The Mirage of  God which was a campaign against religion. He had the opportunity to share some theses of this book in the conference Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason, and Survival. Dawkins has promoted various initiatives in favor of atheism: Out Campaign. This has won him hundreds of critics. One of them, Alister McGrath, promoter of “scientific theology” said he had no knowledge of Christian theology. Other characters like Keith Ward, Christian philosopher attack their ideas. In contrast, the defenders of Dawkins claim that critics do not understand Dawkins’ argument.

On February 23, 2012, he held a major debate with Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion, this was held at the Sheldonian Theater of the University of Oxford. The debate occupied all the theater and had to be broadcast live on some screens. He has also debated, on several occasions, with Oxford Mathematics Professor and philosopher of science John Lennox. Dawkins has been uneasy about the exponential growth of the human population and the problem of overpopulation. So, he is critical of Catholic positions against family planning and population control.

Dawkins was elected a Member of the Royal Literary Society in 1997 and of the Royal Society in 2001. He has received awards at the Royal Society Literature Award, the Literary Prize of the Los Angeles Times, the Silver Medal of the Zoological Society of London, the Prize Michael Faraday, the Nakayama Award, the Humanist of the Year Award, the fifth International Cosmos Award, the Kistler Prize, the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic and the Kelvin Bicentennial Medal. He was also named the author of the year at the British Book Awards.