Doc Dawkins

A belated 70th birthday cheer for Richard Dawkins.  He's probably the top living popularizer of evolution.  In recent years, he's also become well known for questioning religion.  I met him back in the 90s at a speech he gave. I talked to him for a few moments afterward about the evolution of ears.

There aren't too many books for a lay audience that explain evolutionary concepts better than his stuff.  He became famous in the 70s for The Selfish Gene, but it's just the first in a series of fascinating books that include The Extended Phenotype, The Blind Watchmaker and Climbing Mount Improbable.

Ironically, one of the things he's well known for--maybe it's what he's best known for--is the "meme," a word he coined to describe ideas that spread through a culture, not unlike how genes spread through a population.  The concept itself (and I think Dawkins would admit as much) isn't particularly original, and I don't find its analogy to evolution particularly penetrating.