Professor of biology, bestselling author

Richard Dawkins was Oxford’s first Professor of the Public Understanding of Science. Before that he taught zoology the Universities of California and Oxford.

His books, which have sold in the millions, are all still in print and have been translated into more than 30 languages, include The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype, The Blind Watchmaker, River Out of Eden, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, A Devil’s Chaplain, The Ancestor’s Tale, The God Delusion and The Greatest Show on Earth. He has presented television documentaries for both BBC and Channel Four, and is a frequent contributor to radio, television and the newspapers (see www.RichardDawkins.net).

His prizes and awards include the Nakayama Prize and the Cosmos International Prize (Japan), the Kistler Prize and the Lewis Thomas Prize (USA), the Shakespeare Prize (Germany), the Silver Medal of the Zoological Society of London and the Michael Faraday Award of the Royal Society (Britain). He has honorary doctorates in literature as well as in science, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society.
He is now working on a children’s book about science, to be published in 2011 under the (tentative) title of The Magic of Reality. His registered charity, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS) has branches in both Britain and America.