|
|
Kistler Prize
HOME | NOMINATION PROCESS | ADVISORY PANEL
RECIPIENTS 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
2001 Recipient
Zoologist, Darwinist, Evolutionary Biologist
Charles Simonyi Professor of Public Understanding of Science
Oxford University
 Dr.
Richard Dawkins – zoologist, Darwinist, evolutionary biologist,
Charles Simonyi Professor of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford
University, and Fellow of the Royal Society – was awarded the Kistler
Prize for the year 2001.
Dr. Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Kenya,
to British parents in 1941. He spent his early childhood in Africa,
until his parents returned to England in 1949. Following completion
of undergraduate studies at Oxford University in 1962, he undertook
doctoral studies at Oxford with noted ethologist and Nobel Prize winner
Niko Tinbergen. Dr. Dawkins was Assistant Professor of zoology at the
University of California, Berkeley, in the late 1960s before returning
to Oxford as Lecturer, then Reader, in zoology. He was named a Fellow
of New College in 1970. In 1995, he was chosen for the newly endowed
Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science, and in May
2001, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, founded in 1660
for the promotion of excellence in science and numbering Isaac Newton,
Michael Faraday, and Charles Darwin among its Fellows.
The work for
which Dr. Dawkins was awarded the Kistler Prize is the ethology of
the gene, work that redirected the focus of the “levels
of selection” debate away from the individual animal as the unit
of evolution to the genes, and what he has called their extended phenotypes.
At the same time, he applied a Darwinian view to culture through the
concept of memes as replicators of culture. Dr. Dawkins’ powerful
contribution to a new understanding of the relationship between the
human genome and society is that both the gene and the meme are replicators
that mutate and compete in parallel and interacting struggles for their
own propagation.
In his first book, The Selfish Gene, published in
1976 with a second edition in 1989, Dr. Dawkins argued that we, and
all other animals, are survival machines created by our genes. His
second book, The Extended Phenotype (1982), emphasized the extended
phenotypic expression of the gene beyond the individual organism. He
continued to expound his concepts in his subsequent books: The Blind
Watchmaker (1986), River out of Eden (1995), Climbing Mount Improbable (1996), and Unweaving the Rainbow (1998). He has published widely in
scientific journals and other publications on such subjects as evolution,
ethology, and the beauty of science. Through his books, articles, and
numerous television appearances, he has become one of Britain’s
best-known scientists.
Among his many scientific and literary awards
are the 1987 Royal Society of Literature Award, the 1987 Los Angeles
Times Literary Prize, the 1989 Silver Medal of the Zoological Society
of London, the 1990 Royal Society Michael Faraday Award, the 1994 Nakayama
Prize for Human Science, and the 1997 International Cosmos Prize.
 “There is a tension between short-term, individual welfare
and long-term, group welfare or world welfare. If it were left to Darwinism
alone, there could be no hope. Short-term greed is bound to win. The
only hope lies in the unique human capacity to use our big brains with
our massive communal database and our forward-simulating imaginations.”
—From Dr. Dawkins' acceptance speech at the 2001 Kistler Prize
Banquet
Copyright © 1996–2008 Foundation For the Future
|
Awards