Biography

Born 1941, Nairobi, Kenya.

He moved to England at the age of eight and was educated in Oxford. After a few years at the University of California at Berkeley he returned to Oxford, where he is now Reader in Zoology and a Fellow of New College. Richard Dawkins broke new ground in the theory in evolution with his book "The Selfish Gene", published in 1976 (second edition in 1989). He has continued to promote the Darwinian cause with his other best-selling books. "The Extended Phenotype" and "The Blind Watchmaker", and in his forthcoming book based on his Royal Institution Christmas Lectures.

Quotes

Richard Dawkins
Mind Viruses

"Think about the two qualities that a virus, or any sort of parasitic replicator, demands of a friendly medium, the two qualities that make cellular machinery so friendly towards parasitic DNA, and that make computers so friendly towards computer viruses. These qualities are, firstly, a readiness to replicate information accurately, perhaps with some mistakes that are subsequently reproduced accurately; and, secondly, a readiness to obey instructions encoded in the information so replicated.

Cellular machinery and electronic computers excel in both these virus-friendly qualities. How do human brains match up? As faithful duplicators, they are certainly less perfect than either cells or electronic computers. Nevertheless, they are still pretty good, perhaps about as faithful as an RNA virus, though not as good as DNA with all its elaborate proofreading measures against textual degradation. Evidence of the fidelity of brains, especially child brains, as data duplicators is provided by language itself."