Richard Dawkins

Voted by Prospect Magazine as the World's Top Thinker, Richard Dawkins is a pioneering scientist and public thinker who is famous (and infamous to some) around the world. Dawkins was bound to have biology in his genes: he was born to parents who were enthusiastic naturalists, and linked through his wider family to a clutch of accomplished scientists. But what are the influences that have shaped his life and intellectual development? Who and what inspires him?

This promises to be a fascinating evening in which Richard Dawkins will discuss his memoir Brief Candle in the Dark, following the threads that have run through his life so far and homing in on the key individuals, institutions and ideas that have inspired and motivated him. Most important of all, for the first time he reviews with fresh and stimulating insights the evolving narrative of his ideas about science over the course of his highly distinguished career as thinker, teacher and writer, helping us to finally understand the private influences that shaped the world’s most famous atheist, who, more than anyone else in his generation, has explained our own origins.