Richard Dawkins

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is a pioneer among pioneers, a scientist who charged into the biggest questions and never backed down. Born in Nairobi in 1941, he returned to England as a boy, read zoology at Balliol College, Oxford, and completed his doctorate under the Nobel ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen. In 1976 he changed his field with The Selfish Gene, arguing that the gene itself is the true replicator and the engine of natural selection. The Blind Watchmaker and Climbing Mount Improbable carried that vision to the public, and in 2006 The God Delusion made him the world's most famous advocate for atheism and reason, a Fellow of the Royal Society who has debated tirelessly for critical thinking.