Richard Dawkins

Key Contributions

• Popularized the gene-centered view of evolution in The Selfish Gene, changing how many readers understood selection
• Coined meme as a cultural replicator, a concept later transformed by internet culture far beyond his original use
• Developed the extended phenotype argument, treating genes as shaping effects beyond an organism's body
• Served as Oxford's first Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science
• Used books and lectures to defend evolutionary explanation against creationism and pseudoscience
• His clarity and combativeness made him effective, but his public atheism and culture-war interventions also made him highly polarizing